Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS
Content archived on 2024-06-18

Metropolis, Urban Airspace Design

Objective

This project proposes the investigation of radically new airspace design concepts for scenarios, which are extreme when compared to today in terms of traffic density, complexity and constraints.

Extrapolating the current developments in aerospace technology, it is considered likely that the following two new types of air vehicles will have arrived in the second half of this century:

- personal air vehicles, used for door-to-door transport, controlled semi-automatically
- unmanned, autonomous flying cargo vehicles in different weight classes and sizes

Considering the door-to-door aspect, even with inter-local trips, the personal vehicles will especially cause congestion in and around cities. From the same door-to-door philosophy, it follows that the smallest cargo Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) will fly in high numbers and even within cities. This brings up a completely new challenge for Air Traffic Management (ATM): urban airspace design. The challenge is to provide a concept which can handle high volumes, many constraints and autonomous control for these vehicle types.

Apart from being prepared for this potential revolution in aerospace, there is a more fundamental, but still practical, question underlying this challenge. Research so far has shown, that in today’s en-route airspace, dispersing the traffic over the airspace and reducing therefore the structure, reduces the number of potential conflicts and therefore increases both capacity and efficiency.

In the urban airspace scenarios, many envision that these extreme traffic densities will require a very well defined, very structured airspace. The question is: Is this true? And if so, what causes this reversal?

This project has 2 main goals:

- Exploratore options for future urban airspace design
- Provide a better understanding of air traffic using extreme scenarios

The knowledge gained through studying these radical scenarios for air transport will impact the airspace and traffic complexity.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

FP7-AAT-2012-RTD-L0
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

CP-FP - Small or medium-scale focused research project

Coordinator

TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITEIT DELFT
EU contribution
€ 198 315,00
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

No data

Participants (3)

My booklet 0 0