ENHANCED AIRPORT MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEM FOR SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED AIRPORTS: A SYSTEMS ENGINEERING CAPSTONE DESIGN EXPERIENCE

This paper presents the capstone design course educational process in place within the Systems Engineering Department at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, emphasized through the work of a group of students that were enrolled in the capstone design sequence during the 2006-2007 academic year. The process includes preparation for the capstone design project in preceding systems engineering courses, the selection of the capstone design project, the actual student work and its validation by the mentoring faculty, the dissemination of the results to all interested parties, and the assessment of the level of achievement of the course learning objectives. As response to the main local airport request for proposal, the students enrolled in the capstone design course proposed a management information system which organizes the airport operations into subsystems corresponding to the main activities that consider the sharing and exchange of information within the airport facilities. Through the automation of the information flow, the proposed system may help small and medium-sized airports improve their operational efficiency and increase their bottom line.