Kotoka International Airport, Aiming to Become the Aviation Center of Africa

Republic of Ghana is a country located at the north of Gulf of Guinea in the West Africa. The country borders on the Côte d’Ivoire, Togo and Burkina Faso. Kotoka International Airport (KIA) located in Accra, the capital city of Ghana,  has reached to 6.5 annual passenger capacity with its 3rd terminal which had a capacity of serving for annually around 5 million passengers with its 2 terminals until September 2018. This terminal was then decided to be constructed in 2016 while the construction process was completed in June 2018 and it was opened to air traffic in September.

Composed of five floors established on an area of 45.000 m², the 3rd  Terminal building has an operation capacity of 1.250 passenger per hour and it was put into service with 56 check-in counters, 30 passport control units, full-automatic baggage area with a volume of carrying 3500 bags per hour at an area of around 28.000 m², 3 busness halls, a CIP terminal and a parking lot with a capacity of parking for 700 vehicles.

Aiming to become the aviation center of Africa, Kotoka International Airport’s design and construction projects were carried out by Mapa İnşaat which is one of the 2 contracting companies of MNG Group of Companies and is made a faithful impression in the sector with its services. Building security system of the most modern 3rd terminal of this airport, which is planned to serve for 6.5 million passengers annually, is established by Ateksis.

Ateksis has provided service as the solution partner at Kotoka International Terminal building with totally 7 systems including emergency announcement and general voice-over, fire sensing and warning, IP CCTV, card entrance, firefighter telephone, central clock and IPTV. This process starting from the projects of systems designed in accordance with the standards and regulations and ending with the test, start-up and system integrations has truly contributed to gain valuable experiences.

Fire sensing and warning system is very important and critical for an airport which is a facility active 24/7 within daily flow. With this importance level in mind, the terminal was designed with over 2000 spots. Control and management of mechanical equipment in the building is also performed through fire sensing system. Upon the assessment of the architectural features and ambient conditions, point and ray type detectors featuring the most suitable type and qualification is preferred. 34-loop system, planned according to the project requirement with Bosch 5000 series modular fire panels, operates for 3rd terminal building that has a structure convenient for expanding.

Emergency announcement and general voice-over system is designed with the Praesideo series of voice-over product family.   Around 1600 speakers used within the building are chosen in accordance with EN54-24 standards and planned considering the location and assembly details in the project. Regional audio loss likely to occur when there is an interruption or breakage through the line is prohibited by designing the emergency announcement zones in the pattern of A-B. On system center, not only the amplifier level but also a network control unit is designed to operate in a redundant structure. Thus, it is ensured that the system operates smoothly in case of a possible breakdown on system central equipment. In addition to these, configuration of the announcement sound volumes on the relative audio lines is made through sound calibration over power amplifiers according to the sound intensity within the ambient via the noise microphones planned in the check-in zones where the intensity continuously changes.

It is enabled to make announcements for both of the terminal buildings by ensuring Praesideo system -which is already available at Terminal-2 building- communicates over Cobranet through a map-supported software.

Together with the use of the system for emergency announcements, airport notification announcements are also enabled with the same infrastructure through Text to Speech software prepared exclusive to the project by Ateksis. It is ensured that information screens and announcements are synchronous by operating in integration with the Flight information displaying system (FIDS). The software is composed of two sections as of automatic and manual announcements.

Data is received through a Windows extension from airport data repository, where all flight information are gathered, and is transferred immediately and currently into the software. This software carries out the whole operation of receiving all general flight information such as departure, landing, delay and cancellation from the server and turning them into audible announcement instantaneously.

More than 80 recorded ready announcements are used in manual announcements sections. The software broadcasts these announcements used throughout the airports instantaneously on-demand. Moreover, an announcement written in text can be broadcasted instantaneously on request.

It is aimed that the building security is maintained at the top level through monitoring the building entrances, passenger circulation areas, technical locations and baggage check points with IP66 and IK10 featured Bosch cameras at the terminal building.  Cameras with the feature of Intelligent Video Analysis (IVA) are chosen for the baggage management system areas and critical locations such as building entrances and passport control to check and follow the people and baggage through the software.

It decreases the margin of error and fallibility that performing all of these analysis automatically in such a critical area considering the human attentiveness and focusing periods as well as creating screens that alarm the security operator when necessary. It will be possible to make research within the whole CCTV database through the virtual appearances to be created on Video Management System (VMS) via the “appearance recognition” software designated with more than 40 cameras located at the critical areas of the airport or through the real photos to be uploaded to the system. Thus, the time and places that the suspect is seen can be followed and according to this route, a virtual map is created. With this data, the place of the suspect at the time or the route of his/her can easily be detected. By means of this software, it is made convenient to make follow-up and control on missing child cases. Through creating a second recording center, it is ensured that the records are kept as redundant in case of a natural disaster, sabotage or attack that can occur at the 1st recording point. 

The card entrance system is planned throughout the building to keep critical transfer gates under control and avoid unauthorized access. In line with the projects requirements, entrance and exit information are kept under control with the card and fingerprint readers. Authorized access to the critical zones which can only be accessed by the senior management and high-level officers of the airport is enabled through the fingerprint readers. The software of card entrance system is also designed as redundant -as is the case with other systems- to avoid any data loss in case of a breakdown in the software. All floor plans of the terminal building are transferred into the card entrance graphic screen software. Thus, all possible unauthorized access at any place will be displayed on the user screen as alarm and will allow the user for instant intervention. By means of the integration of CCTV and card entrance systems, the footages of unauthorized entrances from these points will automatically opened on the user screen.

It is ensured that all of these systems run in an integrated way through communicating with each other in case of any negative situation likely to happen at the terminal building. In a situation that requires evacuation, the emergency announcement system will be triggered and the evacuation announcement will be made for the related regions, the mechanical equipment managed through the fire detection system will start or stop according to the situation scenario, the zone cameras will be active on the monitoring screens and the doors located in the required run-off route will be released in a controlled manner. This integration is made with Bosch’s BIS (Building Integration System) and by this software, the maps of all airport are transferred into the graphic screen software. In this way, any alarm that may occur at any point will be easily seen by the security and operational teams, thus the intervention time will be minimized. 

We continue to target new and successful projects with a new culture, personal and professional experiences we have gained during the last 1 year with our participation to the project and all our valuable colleagues with whom we have the opportunity to work together.