Project description
Shaping the future of urban air mobility
As the urban air mobility (UAM) field grows, new operational concepts, regulations and standards will be required to ensure that this environment can integrate safely with manned aviation and traffic control. Contributing to this field, the EU-funded SAFIR-Med project aims to achieve safe, sustainable, socially accepted, and beneficial UAM. In the project, five unmanned aerial vehicles platforms will be combined with manned aviation in real-life exercises validating technology in a real urban environment. Demonstrations will be held in different European cities. The project’s work will contribute to U-space architecture principles and create measurable indicators for UAM, helping smart cities to include UAM in their future transportation roadmaps.
Objective
The SAFIR-Med project’s vision is to achieve safe, sustainable, socially accepted and socially beneficial urban air mobility.
SAFIR-Med represents all value chain actors and stakeholder as either project partner (ATC, USPs, Operators, UAS Manufacturers, cities) or formal associate partner (major customers, technology & service providers) at a representative international level. Five unmanned UAV platforms (passenger eVTOL, Hydrogen fuel cell VTOL, AED medical drone, X8 medical transport) will be combined with manned aviation in real life exercises validating technology in real urban environment. Technologies of all partners will be leveraged to make use of the maximum number of U-Space services towards the highest possible operational safety level, including advanced Detect And Avoid U-space service.
The demonstrations will take place in the cities of Antwerp (BE), Aachen (DE) and Heerlen (NL), leveraging the MAHHL trans-border region, following a full de-risking exercise at the DronePort BVLOS test-facility in Sint-Truiden, Belgium.
The demonstration results will be further virtually enhanced through large-scale simulations in order to test the maximum airspace capacity of the CONOPS. The project results will then further be validated and made representable for the whole of the EU, by simulating demonstrations in two additional locations in Europe, namely Athens, Greece (South EU) and Prague, Czech Republic (East EU). Lessons learnt will be documented in a Performance Assessment and recommendations report, providing refinements to the current U-space architecture principles and creating measurable indicators for UAM which will enable Smart Cities to include UAM in their Transport Roadmaps, support standardisation and thereby safety. Finally, SAFIR-Med will have made an important contribution to the EU healthcare system, by ensuring that future generations will continue to democratically have access to the best cure and care.
Fields of science
- engineering and technologycivil engineeringurban engineeringsmart cities
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringroboticsautonomous robotsdrones
- social sciencessocial geographytransporttransport planningair traffic management
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringenergy and fuelsfuel cells
- social sciencespolitical sciencesgovernment systems
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
IA - Innovation actionCoordinator
2610 Antwerpen
Belgium
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.