About ACRIS

ACI’s Community Recommended Information Services, known as ACRIS, sets the standard for information and data exchange in the aviation community, helping airports meet the demands of today and the future. ACRIS defines a framework for airports, airlines, partners and suppliers to share information across different companies and providers.

Airports across the world operate in a vastly challenging and dynamic environment. Whether designated as hub or non-hub, every Airport operates at the centre of an ecosystem with a multitude of partners serving travellers and supporting the local, regional or national economy.

The challenges are immense, made even more serious by the current COVID19 pandemic. The usual pressures of matching Airport capacity to increased demand have been dramatically supplanted by the need for sustainability - substantially reducing costs, improving usage of expensive assets, reducing carbon footprint and energy consumption, while at the same time providing an even more safe and secure environment for passengers and staff alike.

Even without the huge impact of COVID19, changing demand, environmental threats, regulatory pressures, transformational technologies, new entrants, automated vehicles and many more changes provide opportunities and threats to an Airport.

ACRIS Community

Airport performance depends on effective collaboration with multiple parties, and the efficient exchange of meaningful information between them. Communication may be business-to-business (B2B), business-to-customer (B2C) or business-to-government (B2G).

ACRIS is central to efficient airport operations and develops global airport standards such as the ACRIS Semantic Model, which complements similar standards from other aviation organisations such as the IATA Airline Industry Data Model (AIDM) and the ICAO/SESAR ATM Information Reference Model (AIRM).

The definition and implementation of standardised business processes and interoperable IT solutions is a vital issue for the global aviation industry, especially as a way to improve efficiency and to increase revenues. This is not only valid within one stakeholder group (e.g., airlines), but also between different groups such as airlines and airports. The ACI Aviation Community Recommended Information Services (ACRIS) Working Group (WG) is focused on providing these solutions.

To be successful, each service in a collection of information services should be consistent with every other service and should be based on a common understanding of the airport business. Planning and prioritising of service definitions will benefit from this common understanding. The ACRIS Semantic Model provides the platform for this.

ACRIS is supported by:

  • a semantic model;
  • a governance document;
  • a service description template;
  • a guideline for security measurements; and
  • service descriptions

ACRIS Principles:

ACRIS governance is guided by the following principles:

  • Participation is voluntary. ACI Members, World Business Partners and other industry organisations such as IATA participate in the ACRIS programme.
  • The intellectual property rights of all ACRIS documents belong to ACI. The material will be provided free of charge to ACI Members.
  • ACI provides easy access to the ACI ACRIS documents for ACI Members and Working Group participants.
  • ACRIS is based on a process of self-certification.
  • ACRIS adheres as much as possible to existing messaging and other information exchange standards.

Read more about the ACRIS Semantic Model and view a copy of the ACRIS Semantic Model here.