Gate-Level Smart HVAC Automation Based on Real-Time Air Quality and Thermal Comfort Analytics

A gate level HVAC automation that fuses MIS flight-status events, real-time indoor air-quality telemetry, and operator comfort targets into one event driven decision pipeline. Instead of a thermostat or schedule, it follows each gate's operational lifecycle: boarding call (Wait in Lounge / GTO) turns conditioning on; gate closure (Departed / OFB / Cancel / Divert) turns it off. Commands flow over a vendor-neutral NATS bus, exposed to partners via WebSocket and AWS Lambda HTTPS endpoints, and every action is logged in the incident" management workflow as an operator visible audit trail.

The solution combines three live data streams into a single decision context: (a) IAQ (indoor air quality)measurements from the sensor infrastructure (temperature, humidity, CO₂, PM2.5, PM10, TVOC) ingested via MQTT and joined to a per gate sensor map; (b) flight-lifecycle events from the MIS (flight_status, remark_code, off-block time, gate assignment) consumed in near-real time from the airport-operations turnaround feed; (c) operator-set comfort parameters (target temperature, override toggles) captured through the AOCC console.

The TAV defined decision logic is lifecycle-event-driven: HVAC activation is triggered at the operational boarding-call signal and deactivation at the gate-closure signal, with the per gate IAQ telemetry providing context to operators and to the audit trail rather than serving as the primary trigger. The system implements per flight idempotency, multi-gate flight handling, restart safe state recovery, and a uniform write path that ensures every command (whether issued by automation, by an operator from the console, or by a partner via the AWS Lambda API) is processed through the same validation, persistence, and audit layer.

The novelty lies in the cross-domain fusion bringing airline-operations events together with indoor environment telemetry and operator intent in one decision pipeline, rather than relying on thermostat set points or static schedules alone. The lifecycleevent architecture generalises naturally beyond departure gates to any airport space whose occupancy is determined by an external operational schedule (arrival lounges, baggage claim halls, business-class areas, ceremonial / prayer rooms).

The solution requires access to

1. real-time IAQ data from the sensor infrastructure with per sensor identifiers mappable to specific gates;
2. live flight lifecycle data from the MIS, including flight_status, remark_code, gate assignment and off-block time, surfaced through the airport operations data layer;
3. API connectivity to the HVAC control interface for each managed gate
4. A maintained gate to HVAC-zone mapping reflecting the actual physical relationship between sensor placement and HVAC control authority.

A specific constraint addressed by the design is operational accountability: because automated HVAC actions directly affect passenger comfort and energy spend, every command and every state transition is logged as an incident-management entry, so operators can audit, override, and reason about system behaviour. Fallback and manual override paths are provided through the same console and API surfaces, ensuring that automated decisions never become opaque to the operations team.

Reliable operation depends on continuous availability of the sensor stream, the flight-lifecycle feed, and the HVAC control endpoint. Mismatches between sensor coverage and HVAC zone coverage limit the gates eligible for automation; the current deployment is scoped to the seven sensor-mapped gates at "İzmir Adnan Menderes Airport" (ADB), with the architecture designed to absorb additional gates through configuration alone.

The targeted customers are airport operators, terminal-management teams, facility-management units, and smart-building / facility-automation teams that aim to drive HVAC and other environmental systems from real operational events rather than from schedules or thermostat set-points alone. The result is equally relevant to business partners responsible for airport digitalisation, IoT-based facility monitoring, HVAC automation, and energy-efficiency programmes including BMS vendors, energy service providers, and ground-handlers who can consume the gate level AC and IAQ services through the published partner API.

Beyond gate HVAC, the same lifecycle-event-to-environmental-control pattern is applicable to any airport space whose occupancy is dictated by an operational schedule, making the solution a template for operations-driven facility automation across terminal and airside operations.

The result can be reused in other gates, terminal areas, or airport facilities where real-time sensor data, HVAC control connectivity, and an operational-event source (such as a flight-lifecycle or passenger-movement feed) are available. Reuse requires

1. defining the local lifecycle events that should drive activation and de-activation,
2. supplying the local sensor-to-zone and event-to-zone mappings
3. integrating the HVAC control API or equivalent automation endpoint
4. defining the operator-override and audit surface that fits the local operations model.

Because the decision logic, the partner-facing API and the audit-trail integration are decoupled from the underlying sensor and HVAC vendor implementations, the same pattern can be applied with different sensor providers, different HVAC platforms, a nd different operational-event sources.