The Airport Carbon Accreditation (ACA) certification standard provides four levels, where the first, ‘Mapping – footprint measurement’ aims to identify emission sources within the operational activities of airport management companies, evaluating carbon emissions per year and producing detailed reports on the carbon footprint of each source.
SAC, the company managing the Catania Fontanarossa International Airport, started its certification process in 2016 at Level 1, Mapping – footprint measurement. Here, non-electric vehicles (cars, road sweepers, trucks, tractors, loaders, road rollers and so on) have been identified as one of the sources to be monitored.
SOFTECH supplied the new location and monitoring system, which kicked off in March this year and now allows SAC SpA to calculate the carbon emission footprint of these vehicles.
This system incorporates a COB location device controlled by a central EAGLE software system, both designed and produced by Softech.
The COB device features a GPS locator and a 3G transmitter, which track each vehicle’s position and send it back to the EAGLE software via configurable frequency. This modular device can be supplied in various configurations, depending on needs. Just as an example, it can provide Wi-Fi interface and I/O modules, and it can be powered onboard or by an internal battery.
The EAGLE software allows to locate the identified vehicles and measure the amount of CO² emissions produced by their use.
The location software provides both real time monitoring, and historical reports for each vehicle’s position, instant-minimum-maximum speed, kilometres travelled, travel and/or pause times, as well as the replay of all trips taken. Data are accessible both in table format, and on geo-referenced maps, such as Google Maps.
The CO² measuring tools provide special reporting features to calculate emissions by the hour or other specified time intervals, both for a given vehicle, or a given vehicle type, or for the whole fleet.
The EAGLE system supports WEB technology for desktop and portable devices, such as tablet and smartphones. It can be provided under either a proprietary server licensing scheme, or as cloud service of SOFTECH’s technology platform.