The first version of the AiRMOUR Guidebook on Urban Air Mobility integration published! Feedback from cities and regions is welcome

The AiRMOUR project has published a guidebook on Urban Air Mobility integration process for cities and regions. Any feedback to improve the content of the guidebook is welcome to enhance the final version expected in 2023.

The AiRMOUR guidebook is designed to help city and region decision makers to perceive when and how to invest in the development of Urban Air Mobility (UAM). This first version of the guidebook helps to understand the role a city or region should have if it wants to embrace the new capabilities of UAM and better understand this new type of domain. The guidebook is also relevant for other stakeholders in Europe, as it combines the four main points of view relevant to Urban Air Mobility: urban design and mobility, aviation safety, public acceptance and UAM integration process management. The second, more detailed version of the guidebook is expected in late 2023 to consolidate feedback and project proceedings to present the most relevant insights of the program.

The book is structured around thematic areas, for example citizen engagement, legal aspects or multimodality and is designed to answer the main concerns that have been highlighted by cities:

The book also covers low tech solutions that bring groundbreaking results and reminds cities of stakeholder groups that are too often forgotten.

See the AiRMOUR deliverable 6.2 ‘Guidebook for UAM integration’ (pdf)

Please send your feedback to [email protected]

For further information on the Guidebook, please contact:

Benoît Larrouturou, [email protected]

Combined with the public acceptance studies, the model will be a valuable tool for city planners and authorities.

Drones and air taxis can operate from relatively small areas and effectively utilise rooftops or other less frequented populated ground areas. This will introduce new opportunities for, and place new demands on, vertical human movement. A direct consequence is that city and urban environments will see air-traffic in new ways and in areas where presently are no such activities. Hence, the introduction of Urban Air Mobility (UAM) will expose the public to new sources of aircraft noise. This means that the city authorities must re-evaluate established urban design principles, and take into account location of vertiports (landing sites) and where UAM flight corridors are to be established.

The AiRMOUR project develops a UAM noise model and a supporting noise measurement procedure. This novel approach enables simulation of percepted passenger eVTOL noise on the ground.

“The use of simulators to project noise data of UAM vehicles onto virtual environment helps us understand and model how the noise propagates, and furthermore, use this model to measure public acceptance of UAM vehicles”, says Technical Director Gokul Srinivasan from Robots Expert.

“Combined with studies of real-life public acceptance studies for eVTOL noise, this will be a valuable tool for city planners, UAM operators and air-traffic managers to enable flight corridors and routes optimised for minimal noise disturbance for the public”, adds Senior Scientist Stian Andre Solbø from NORCE Norwegian Research Centre.

For further information, please contact:

NORCE Norwegian Research Centre: Stian Andre Solbø, ssol(at)norceresearch.no

Robots Expert Finland Ltd: Gokul Srinivasan, gokul.srinivasan(at)robots.expert

The AiRMOUR project identifies the areas in which rules and regulations cover the needs of the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) scenarios that will be demonstrated within the project and the objective of saving lives.

Some of the rules regulating the conventional air traffic and infrastructure are applicable to drones, but at times the need for rewriting a rule or making a completely new one appears.

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) will be operating at lower altitudes and needs therefore to be integrated into cities’ internal infrastructure. This creates several new interfaces which require regulation. Cooperation with stakeholders, such as city planners and full integration with other air traffic are also necessary.

“To solve this we’ll need more research and are dependent on the latest technologies to get drones to operate safely and as autonomously as possible. For example, for the separation of drones we’ll need both new, safe and proven technology and updated regulations”, says Human Factors Specialist Gustaf Fylkner from Luftfartsverket.

The standard rule for separation in conventional aviation is currently 1000 ft (~300 m) vertical or 3 nautical miles (~5,5 km) horizontally in the Terminal Maneuvering Area (TMA). Much of the UAM traffic will fly in less than 500 ft (~150 m) above the ground and distances between Urban Air Vehicles must be much smaller, likely depending on their ability to navigate and share their position and intention.

Regulators have challenges to rule for something that has never happened before, but there are pan-European initiatives to get new regulations which would cover the emerging UAM services.

When flying a drone in a specific or certified category, a rigorous process, e.g. Specific Operations Risk Assessment (SORA), is required to prove that the flight is safe to conduct.

“It is clear that the current rules make it complicated and cumbersome to perform even experimental and validation flights. There are some things more to do before we will see commercial use on a wider scale. Additionally, aviation has to find solutions for charging infrastructure and handling of batteries in the same way the car industry has to find them”, says Fylkner.

The fast evolving drone industry that is eager to prove its concept has often ended up making local solutions to be able to operate at all. This is something that the AiRMOUR project is trying to identify. Are there rules in place today, on a national level? Do they vary? Are some solutions better than the others? Is it possible to formulate a set of rules that would suit all different local applications? If so, it would be better to have the same rules applied everywhere in the European Union and ultimately worldwide.

“The regulatory frameworks applicable to EMS UAM span all three domains: aviation, urban and medical. Medical payloads need to be properly handled at vertiports that may be part of the urban mobility plan and flown according to applicable aviation rules. The combined effort is non-trivial, and AiRMOUR will also provide an overview of the combined regulatory environment”, adds Technical Director Gokul Srinivasan from Robots Expert.

The AiRMOUR project team has so far identified the different areas of regulation which need to be taken into account in the demonstration flights of the project. The partners are collecting data both on the EU and national level.

For further information, please contact:

Swedish Civil Aviation Administration, Luftfartsverket: Gustaf Fylkner, gustaf.fylkner(at)lfv.se

Robots Expert Finland Ltd: Gokul Srinivasan, gokul.srinivasan(at)robots.expert

AiRMOUR develops an Urban Air Mobility GIS Tool to be used in city planning. The tool will help urban decision makers and city planners to think in three dimensions. The partner responsible for the tool is Robots Expert.

The expected growth of drone logistics and other air mobility inside cities mean that the low-level airspace is no longer a concern only for aviation authorities. As air mobility technology is becoming more mature, urban decision makers and city planners need to think in three dimensions.

“The Geographical Information System (GIS) tool will assist city planners and policy makers to visualise combined ground and air data such as noise, nature protection and mobility hotspots”, says Benoît Larrouturou Country Manager Germany at Robots Expert. “Opening the urban airspace also requires citizens to see value in this type of mobility. The tool is designed to facilitate the engagement of citizens in that regard. Being able to visualise the impact increases the understanding and allows for more fact-based decision making.”

With the new tool, new data layers can be used to enrich the decision-making process as cities decide to make them publicly available. A large number of factors, for example air risk mitigation aspects and flight mission boundary conditions and policy management (e.g., management of noise abatement areas, zones with varying public acceptance, population density charts, landing sites and ground risk zones) can be considered. Some factors are meant to be static, others to be managed in a dynamic way, e.g. bird nesting areas should be protected only during the nesting season.

The GIS Tool is a cornerstone in the AiRMOUR City planning toolbox which also includes a UAM Integration Guidebook and a training package with online courses and Masterclasses.

Most of the data relevant for the tool already exists in AiRMOUR partner cities. Combining it in a meaningful way is not trivial. Also, too much data may sometimes be overwhelming to manage and understand. The national policies on access to data very significantly across Europe, and directly impact the speed of adoption of UAM and the potential usefulness of tools such as the AiRMOUR GIS tool.

“Cities have different data policies. These variations cause challenges when developing tools that are based on their data. Many cities collect a lot of data, but it is not always clear how they want to use the data and what they see as the right use for it. There are concerns about privacy issues, too”, says Larrouturou.

“Nevertheless, cities have come a long way when it comes to acquiring data – a lot exists already.”

UAM GIS Tool: https://uaspace.robots.expert/airmour/
AiRMOUR Deliverable 6.1. GIS Tool user manual

For further information, please contact:

Robots Expert

Benoît Larrouturou, benoit.larrouturou(at)robots.expert

The analysis produced by Robots Expert seeks to map the challenges and shape solutions in the field of emergency medical services and UAM.

The AiRMOUR project has published a foresight analysis on Urban Air Mobility (UAM) Emergency Medical Services in EU cities and regions. The analysis covers the current status of mobility, goes through an identification of related challenges and explores the possible solutions or improvements that can be either implemented or researched. The deliverable is part of the AiRMOUR work package ‘Emergency Medical Services UAM concept description’.

“It is incredibly interesting to dive into the complexity of interactions between cities, emergency services and aviation. We uncovered significant differences across Europe and found trends that need to be understood in order to embrace the possibilities that lie in the future”, says Benoît Larrouturou, Country Manager Germany at Robots Expert, the partner responsible for the deliverable.

UAM was first thought of as a third dimension of transportation, cars being the main mode of transportation. The world now focuses on mobility instead of transportation. Thanks to the measures taken by cities and the development of new mobility offerings, from car sharing to micro mobility, car ownership in cities is reaching an all-time low. Mobility is not addressed anymore by adding capacity, but rather looking for efficiency. “In some archipelago cities, such as the AiRMOUR cities Helsinki and Stavanger, aviation technologies may make a positive impact on the delivery of emergency medical services to some islands”, says Larrouturou.

One key finding is that most studies take systemic economic growth for granted and ignore macro trends such as climate change, energy transition and scarcity of raw materials. The foresight analysis shows how the topics of energy and resources availability are particularly hidden from the radar. Economic models consider only capital and availability of work, but do not account for energy and raw materials.
The study shows how crucial it is to understand changes around energy and raw materials to apprehend the world in the coming years. The foresight analysis also shows how those economic studies may be misleading the decision makers because they make unstated assumptions that make projections very unreliable.

“There are some cases where airlifting does offer significant advantages over other modes of transport”, says Larrouturou. “The future of emergency medical services has to be thought of in a world more VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) than ever before. All innovations are not equal to progress. We acknowledge that it is particularly challenging for decision makers to discern when many options are possible, several are feasible in a world with more challenges and less energy, even fewer compatible with a 1.5-degree world.”

Transversal skills are highly needed to help cities integrate EMS and mobility. “The science is clear, historical patterns can no longer be used to predict the future. The ability to reach the consensus between cities, EMS and aviation stakeholders requires transversal skills that are essential to engage citizens to make the right choices in the future. Floods, sea level rise, fires will spread across Europe. The northern part of it will be most affected. Emergency services should be developed to mitigate and increase the resilience to this changing world”, says Larrouturou and adds: “Further studies need to be made around the impact of the development of micro mobility on EMS services.”

See the AiRMOUR deliverable 2.1 ‘Urban Air Mobility Emergency Medical Services in EU cities and regions’ (pdf)

For further information, please contact:

Robots Expert

benoit.larrouturou(at)robots.expert