Project description
Safe, explainable, and compliant AI for air traffic management
The rapid integration of AI into air traffic management (ATM) and airport operations is transforming aviation, but also creating urgent challenges around trust, safety, and regulatory compliance in safety-critical environments. The EU-funded AIC4ATM project is developing a modular AI compliance engine to ensure that AI systems in ATM and airport operations are explainable, auditable, and aligned with emerging EU regulations. The project combines European regulatory analysis with stakeholder input, including ethics-by-design and accountability. It structures ATM AI use cases into a graph-based repository linking risks, technical components, and legal obligations. This enables automated compliance checking, bias monitoring, and human-centric oversight. Ultimately, the project supports trustworthy digital transformation in European aviation.
Objective
The rapid adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Air Traffic Management (ATM) and airport operations offers efficiency gains but raises critical challenges of trust, safety, and regulatory compliance. The forthcoming EU AI Act and related frameworks (e.g. EASA AI) require AI systems in critical infrastructures to be explainable, auditable, and continuously monitored, standards lacking dedicated aviation-specific mechanisms.
AIC4ATM addresses this gap by developing a modular AI Compliance Engine that integrates ethical safeguards, operational transparency, Explainable AI, and regulatory adherence for AI applications under development or approaching deployment. Combining top-down analysis of European legal frameworks with bottom-up insights from ATM stakeholders, including AI deployers such as airports, the project follows Responsible Innovation principles of anticipation, inclusion, ethics-by-design, and accountability.
To achieve effective compliance, representative AI use cases in ATM and airport operations are identified and clustered, and their technical components decomposed to pinpoint obligations, building on the Common Taxonomy. These profiles populate a graph-based repository capturing interrelations among AI attributes, risks, and regulatory requirements, while processing the large data volumes typical of SESAR solutions. A risk taxonomy and compliance logic trees link identified risks to concrete obligations and support human–machine teaming.
The AI Compliance Engine design provides end-to-end support, from risk categorization and automated compliance checklists to interfaces ensuring operational clarity and human-centric safeguards such as bias monitoring and continuous oversight. A development roadmap guides the concept to TRL 7 for real-world deployment. By enabling safe, certifiable AI use, AIC4ATM fosters dependable, data-driven innovation and drives digital transformation into one of Europe’s most safety-critical domains.
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: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences computer and information sciences artificial intelligence
- engineering and technology civil engineering transportation engineering airport engineering
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.2.5 - Climate, Energy and Mobility
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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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.
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.
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.
HORIZON-JU-RIA - HORIZON JU Research and Innovation Actions
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) HORIZON-SESAR-2025-DES-ER-03
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
08034 BARCELONA
Spain
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.