SAFE AND FLEXIBLE INTEGRATION OF ADVANCED U-SPACE SERVICES FOCUSING ON MEDICAL AIR MOBILITY

Project Information

SAFIR-Med

Grant agreement ID: 101017701

DOI

10.3030/101017701

Project closed

EC signature date 10 December 2020

Start date 1 December 2020

End date 31 March 2023

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Smart, Green And Integrated Transport

Total cost

€ 2 725 120,00

EU contribution

€ 2 038 609,01

Coordinated by

HELICUS BVBA
Belgium

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - SAFIR-Med (SAFE AND FLEXIBLE INTEGRATION OF ADVANCED U-SPACE SERVICES FOCUSING ON MEDICAL AIR MOBILITY)

Reporting period: 2022-01-01 to 2023-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

What is the problem/issue being addressed?
The problem/issue being addressed (and therefore SAFIR-Med project’s vision) is to achieve safe, sustainable, socially beneficial and socially accepted urban air mobility.

Why is it important for society?
Through advances in medical solutions (medicine, techniques) and demographics cost in healthcare rises beyond inflation levels. As Healthcare already takes up 10% of GDP (EU average level) and other large budgets are rising as well (e.g. retirement, education, defense) efficiences will need to be found within healthcare. This leads to a consolidation and specialisation of medical technical activities. With an increase in average distance between supply and demand of technical medical care, demand is on the rise for reliable, ad-hoc and rapid transport. This is the underlying (societal) reason to address the abovementionned issue. SAFIR-Med aims to enable Smart Cities to include UAM in their Transport Roadmaps, support standardisation and thereby safety. By doing this, 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.

What are the overall objectives that were achieved by the project?
(1) Help urban authorities realize their role and make their first steps in the UAS world
(2) Improve infrastructure contributing to safer transport with a positive social impact
(3) Ensure sustainable infrastructure that is beneficial for society and environmentally friendly
(4) Demonstrate novel public UAM services and service models
(5) Regulation, standards, business prospects and outputs dissemination: Ensure sustainability and mid-term wide adoption of the proposed solution

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During SAFIR-Med all unmanned aviation value chain actors and stakeholder are collaborating as either project partner (ATC, USPs, Operators, UAS Manufacturers, cities) or as formal associate partner (major customers, technology & service providers) at a representative international level.
- a U-space architecture and demonstration scenarios have been created. Interfaces were designed and agreed upon.
- Five unmanned UAV platforms (passenger eVTOL, VTOL, AED medical drone, X8 medical transport) have been linked to a single BVLOS Helicus Command & Control Center to prepare to demonstrate various U-Space services based on a varied scenario planning. These scenarios combined the unmanned flights with manned aviation in real life exercises validating technology in urban environment.
- Much work is performed to obtain operational authorisations to perform the demonstrations missions during 2022 and 2023. Training syllabus has been developed at operator level, including detailed multi company crew cooperation procedures. These procedures have been trained and applied during joint flight test days in preparation of the formal de-risking activities that will take place at BVLOS testing area, before moving to the urban area.
- Technologies of all partners are being 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.
- various procedures from the new EU legislation have been executed for the first time and feedback provided to EASA

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The demonstrations took place in the city of Antwerp (BE) and between 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 were virtually enhanced through large-scale simulations in order to test the maximum airspace capacity of the CONOPS. The project havce been 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 have been 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. These learnings have a.o. led to 5 accepted inclusions in the CORUS-XUAM CONOPS.

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.

SAFIR-Med - U-Space for a multi-drone medical delivery system