Challenges and Approaches of Non-pharmaceutical Interventions for Airport Operations During Pandemic Situations

During the COVID-19 pandemic, an uncontrolled spread of the virus worldwide was observed. To reduce the world wide spread of highly contagious viruses in the future, it is essential to target situations with a high risk for spreading contagious diseases. The risk of rapidly spreading of diseases is characterized by the fact that prevention measures cannot be applied as required, e.g., due to faulty execution. This situation has been observed during the COVID-19 pandemic in passenger transportation, especially at airports. Air transportation enabled the rapid exchange of people to and from different locations, which may have contributed to the spread of the virus, especially at the beginning of the pandemic before hygiene measures and vaccines were available. It would be particularly interesting for airports to use innovative guidance and tracking strategies and assistance systems to allow people to travel further and react fast in circumstances similar to the one observed during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper examines the challenges in preventing the uncontrolled spread of disease in air transportation of people and highlights the current state of the art. Furthermore, a new approach using technical systems is demonstrated and discussed in other scenarios, e.g., rail transport.