Symbiosis between airports and railways:
Enhancing door-to-gate passenger experience through AI in the case of Milan Bergamo Airport

Research question:
How can user-oriented design be used with Al as a tool, to optimize the passenger door-to-gate experience in airports, by enhancing railway connectivity?

Location
Bergamo, Italy

Status
Master Thesis Project

Supervisor
Eugenio Morello

Typology
Airport, Mobility

Year
2023

"We call ourselves Homo sapiens because our intelligence is so important to us, even though for thousands of years we have tried to understand how we think and act"

— Stuart J. Russell and Peter Norvig

In the era of a globalized economy and highly dynamic competition for economic activities around the world, airports increasingly represent themselves as the most strategically important transport infrastructures. Their attractiveness and impact on the city depend on their accessibility, which is highly affected by the quality of connections, mainly railway connections. Finally, the thesis will propose a conceptual design intervention that shows the importance of symbiosis between airports and railways, considering Orio al Serio Airport, since it has future mobility plans and potential which consider the same objectives of the thesis and offers a perspective for improvement. Using AI as a tool will be proposed, for processing the data of passengers’ preferences, and offering a suitable route depending on their needs. The idea is to develop an AI platform, which can communicate with the passengers through an app, suggesting which route to take considering the passenger’s preferences and amount of people present in the airport. The design does not depend on AI, for the most optimal passenger experience, it is suggested to use AI. The design itself already improves the passengers’ experience when using rail as a mode of airport accessibility.

We design buildings, airports, and infrastructures for the people as users, but yet we still experience spaces that seem to be designed for objects, rather than humans.

The rapid technological changes and inventions, created by us, the people, have affected the world and our lives, to move in a progressive, dynamic, and flexible direction. Such changes are followed by fast urban development and increased demand for mobility, both locally and internationally. In the era of a globalized economy and highly dynamic competition for economic activities around the world, airports increasingly represent themselves as the most strategically important transport infrastructures. Their attractiveness and impact on the city depend on their accessibility, which is highly affected by the quality of connections, mainly railway connections. However, as much as we are moving forward, we are also moving in an ignorant direction, we tend to forget and neglect our needs while undergoing the impacts of these rapid changes. We still experience and face problems in understanding our needs, and preferences, understanding ourselves in general, and building structures and facilities that do not respond to our needs. We design buildings, airports, and infrastructures for the people as users, but yet we still experience spaces that seem to be designed for objects, rather than humans. The new dynamic pace of life, requires different spaces through which we move, spaces that respond to the users’ preferences and style of living. The patterns and movements of people, have to align with the general technological progressions, in order to avoid the problems which we are facing today. Such alignment and balance can be improved by designing human-oriented facilities and using AI as a tool to assist the users and understand their preferences when using complex infrastructures and buildings.

If airports have areas and footprints as big as city centres, why is their accessibility not of the same importance as that of city centres?

The aim is to improve and optimize through design, the unbalanced and rigid movement patterns when it comes to railway accessibility in airports, by focusing on the user’s needs and preferences which can be assisted by AI. People have different needs when using public transport and airports, and that is why we need to think of flexible and adaptable infrastructures. Since we are the ones that create them, we have the power and ability to improve them and adapt them to our needs.

The aim is to improve and optimize through design, the unbalanced and rigid movement patterns when it comes to railway accessibility in airports, by focusing on the user’s needs and preferences which can be assisted by AI.

Integrating AI in airports, particularly the connections between railways and airports, means analyzing, observing, and experimenting with current present conditions and challenges, and through a combination of digital and physical interaction, to propose a solution for the future.

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Milano WOG 2026