Feasibility of piezoelectric tiles adoption: A case study at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) Malaysia

Abstract

The basic function of an international airport is an aerodrome, provides not only the facilities for flights management, but also for customs and passport control. Nowadays, most of the international airports have established commercial outlets for food, products and services. As such, these airports are built with larger scale and more sophisticated on both infrastructure and infostructure which aim to be the most extensive air-travel service providers that connect the nations to the international gateways. Looking at the daily operations of an international airport, the energy consumption is apprehended to be enormous. Besides, knowing the fact that reliance on fossil fuels to power the airport buildings and to run the operations daily, this has led to many negative socioenvironmental implications. To date, some of the world major international airports have begun in renewable energy adoption-which mainly focused on solar energy as a way to reduce fossil energy consumption and towards greenhouse gases reduction. Inspired by thinking differently since solar energy has been adopted in Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) in 2014, through this study we proposed another form of renewable energy-piezoelectric technology adoption into our KLIA as a feasibility study. We believe that piezoelectric technology could complement the renewable energy mix, by tapping the crowd kinetic energy gathered internally in the airport buildings particularly at a few main entrances. Hence, the objectives of this study are (a) to examine the potential factors that will foster piezoelectric tiles adoption at KLIA and (b) to propose the ways for KLIA in speeding up piezoelectric tiles adoption within the airport terminals. The case study on the Malaysia Airports Holding Berhad (MAHB which manages the KLIA) was based on primary data collected through a series of qualitative focus group conducted on 14 (8 senior managers and 6 technical professionals) who were interested and supportive of this research project. Besides, secondary data are reviewed to obtain more comprehensive understanding on the KLIA operations and to triangulate the primary data collected. The research began in September 2014 and completed in June 2016. The main reason we opted for qualitative studies is to comply with the criteria of inductive approach, whereby to validate this feasibility study. As a conclusion, there is possibility for piezoelectric tiles adoption at KLIA. The financial factor of the piezoelectric tiles is the conditional factor which has to be redesigned in order to attain the objective of good return on investment. What we strongly believe, once the piezoelectric tiles have been adopted in KLIA, this innovation would put a big leap for KLIA and MAHB, one step close towards materialising a greener Malaysian international airport.