During the 17 days of the Games, the number of in-coming flights to the Chinese capital could amount to 1600 a day, according to the Beijing Capital International Airport (BCIA).

Its third terminal, which opened in March, is able to handle 76 million passengers and 580,000 flights a year with peak hour handling of more than 124 flights per hour by 2015.

Creating GOIS

Unisys, who was contracted to build the IT infrastructure, created the Ground Operation Information System (GOIS), to manage operations.

The GOIS receives the latest information from air traffic control, airline systems, various operational systems and handling agents, stores the information in the airport operational database and disseminates this real-time data to BCIA's key systems and personnel.

The system includes a sophisticated resource management component to oversee and allocate various key airport resources such as stands, gates, check-in counters and baggage carousels to maximize efficiency and minimize flight delays. The system also enables airport officials to monitor the delivery of service to airlines and passengers, therefore improving both airport operations and the traveller experience.

At Terminal 3, Unisys designed the overall integration framework and successfully integrated more than 20 core operational systems prior to the terminal's opening. Unisys then implemented the system, ensuring seamless interoperability of disparate systems and scalable, manageable integration architecture.

Beijing Underground

The Beijing Olympic Park is supported by a large underground system, a circular 5.5 km roadway connecting surface roads and vast underground parking facilities. System integrator, catalystShanghai Hi-Tech Control Systems (Hite) of Nanjing and Shanghai, was engaged to provide a complete traffic control and management solution on a fault-tolerant server platform.

A computerized tunnel intelligence management system, using servers from Stratus Technologies, located in the mission-control monitoring center provides real-time information that enables accurate, reliable and rapid response to ever-changing conditions in the loop, keeping traffic flowing efficiently and travellers safe.

The constant collection of information from video monitoring and data collection devices throughout the tunnel system to the I/O server makes possible immediate analyses of input, evaluation of conditions, multi-point communications, and proactive traffic management. Large video screens in the control center also display this data and video information to workers and supervisors on duty in real time. All information is stored to a unified database and used for data mining, activity reporting and operations management.

Online Games video

Besides the spectators and visitors at the Beijing, China's millions of netizens are not forgotten. China Central Television (CCTV), the Beijing Olympics' official Internet and mobile phone broadcaster, will allow popular online video site Tudou.com and MySpace China to broadcast content from the games.

Shanghai-based Tudou is China's most popular online video site. In July 2007, Nielsen Netratings reported that Tudou was one of the Web's fastest-growing sites, with over 6 million unique users per week and almost half a billion Web pages per week.

The deal is a particularly big win for MySpace China, based in Beijing, which has been operating there for less than a year, and has not yet established itself as the powerhouse in China that its social-networking site is in the U.S.

(Additional text by Steven Schwankert)