Malaysia Hosts Inernational Focus Group On Aviation Applications

KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 4 (Bernama) -- Malaysia hosted a three-day international focus group on aviation applications of cloud computing for flight data monitoring, motivated by the events of the missing flight MH370. Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC), senior director for licensing and assignment division, Norizan Baharin said cloud computing was computing in which large groups of remote servers were networked to allow centralised data storage and online access to computer services or resources. She said the three-day meeting that ended Wednesday focused on considering the feasibility of streaming flight data from aircraft to the ground in real-time. "The meeting, which may take within five years, would be an important contribution towards the establishment of international standards for the use of an aviation cloud for real-time monitoring of flight data," she told reporters here, Wednesday. She said the discussion included the type of data to be transmitted to the ground and the required transmission rates, data security, storage and analytics, ownership of flight data, and the cost and changes to business models required to implement such systems on a global scale. "The next meeting will be held in February in Montreal, Canada. We received an encouraging participation of 70 members from aviation experts, aircraft operators, international aviation bodies and related international agencies," she said. Norizan said the meeting was hosted by the MCMC, the Communications and Multimedia Ministry and United Nation's body, International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in collaboration with the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO). She said the idea to use cloud computing for flight data was first mooted in April this year by Communications and Multimedia Minister, Ahmad Shabery Cheek during the ITU World Telecommunications Development Conference in Dubai. Flight MH370, carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew members from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, disappeared from the radar screen about an hour after departing from the Kuala Lumpur International Airport on March 8. The search for the missing aircraft is still on-going in the southern Indian Ocean. -- BERNAMA