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Advanced Air Mobility for Innovative and Sustainable Transport Systems

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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Transportation".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2021) | Viewed by 19581

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Prof. Dr. Maria Nadia Postorino

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Guest Editor

Department of Civil, Chemical, Environmental, and Materials Engineering (DICAM), Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna, 40126 Bologna, Italy
Interests: transport systems; sustainable mobility; urban air mobility (UAM); intelligent transport systems
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Dr. Chiara Caterina Ditta

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Assistant Guest Editor

Department of Civil, Chemical, Environmental, and Materials Engineering (DICAM), Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna, 40126 Bologna, Italy
Interests: urban air mobility (UAM); public transport; air transport systems; transportation systems modeling; sustainable mobility

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The latest drone advancements toward passenger trips has opened new scenarios for sustainable transportation systems. Advanced air mobility (AAM) is a new concept of air transportation using electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft to move passengers and goods among areas not easily served by ground transportation or existing aviation modes. Air mobility services might be one of the possible solutions to reduce ground congestion problems and related impacts while supporting mobility in urban areas, where they are emerging as urban air mobility (UAM) services.

“Flying Vehicles” features and their role in realizing AAM solutions, which will integrate ground-based transportation services, are expected to significantly modify mobility scenarios by providing new challenges for air traffic management where drones, air taxi services, and possibly other kinds of flying vehicles will coexist.

The purpose of this Special Issue is to gather research investigating innovative models, methods, and approaches aiming to improve current transportation networks by using AAM solutions. Particularly, this Special Issue offers an opportunity for researchers to illustrate new approaches and models to realize integrated, sustainable AAM systems, which will contribute to the realization of public/private services and the optimization of air cargo networks together with the use of drones. Moreover, travelers’ acceptance of AAM scenarios and the impacts of AAM solutions on transportation system performance are an important aspect to be examined for providing contributions on transportation system modelling, policy design, and system optimization.

The Issue’s scope is focused on but not limited to the following topics of interest:

Emerging scenarios of AAM, specifically air taxis;
Modeling urban and suburban transport systems by air taxis;
Simulation of integrated air–ground transport systems in AAM contexts;
Investigation of user acceptance: relevant factors and issues;
Expected travel demand for AAM;
Autonomous vehicles and implications for AAM;
Simulating traffic flows in AAM scenarios: micro, macro, and meso approaches;
Drones and the development of air cargo networks;
Safety and security implications of AAM;
Policies and regulations for implementing AAM scenarios in real contexts;
Environmental impacts of AAM.

Prof. Dr. Maria Nadia Postorino
Dr. Chiara Caterina Ditta
Guest Editors

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Keywords

advanced air mobility
air taxis
public services
sustainability
system modelling and optimization
transportation networks
urban air mobility

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 871 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Roadmap to Early Implementation of Passenger Air Mobility: Findings from a Delphi Study

by Kshitija Desai, Christelle Al Haddad and Constantinos Antoniou

Sustainability 2021, 13(19), 10612; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su131910612 - 24 Sep 2021

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 3163

Abstract

Urban air mobility (UAM) has recently increased in popularity as an emerging mode of transportation, covering a wide range of applications, for on-demand or scheduled operations of smaller aircraft, in and around metropolitan areas. Due to its novelty and as it has not yet been implemented, UAM research still faces uncertainties. In particular, there is a need to develop a roadmap for the early implementation of passenger air mobility, aiming to identify the most prominent challenges, opportunities, hazards, and risks, but also to highlight the most promising use cases, or on the contrary, the ones associated with the least benefits compared to the risks or complexity they entail. To answer the previous questions, and therefore address this research gap, this study used a two-round Delphi questionnaire, targeting various stakeholder groups (product owners, policymakers, researchers, consultants, investors), leading to a total of 51 experts, out of which 34 also participated in the second round. In the first round, the main challenges, opportunities, and hazards facing the implementation of passenger UAM were identified. Findings on challenges and opportunities that were dependent on use cases only (as opposed to being dependent on technology or external factors) were then fed back into the second round, which helped evaluate the use cases based both on their complexities, as well as the associated benefits. Accordingly, medical/emergency was identified as the best use case and intracity transport as the worst (in terms of complexity vs. benefits). Similarly, a risk analysis evaluated the potential hazards associated with the implementation of UAM and their impacts on the system viability. Community backlash was found to be the most hazardous one, while malicious passenger behavior and improperly designed infrastructure as the least. Findings from this study can help better understand stakeholders’ opinions, highlighting promising use cases, but also risks to be aware of, constituting therefore a roadmap for future implementation. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Air Mobility for Innovative and Sustainable Transport Systems)

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15 pages, 3046 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Advanced Air Mobility: Demand Analysis and Market Potential of the Airport Shuttle and Air Taxi Markets

by Rohit Goyal, Colleen Reiche, Chris Fernando and Adam Cohen

Sustainability 2021, 13(13), 7421; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su13137421 - 02 Jul 2021

Cited by 57 | Viewed by 9430

Abstract

Advanced air mobility (AAM) is a broad concept enabling consumers access to on-demand air mobility, cargo and package delivery, healthcare applications, and emergency services through an integrated and connected multimodal transportation network. However, a number of challenges could impact AAM’s growth potential, such as autonomous flight, the availability of take-off and landing infrastructure (i.e., vertiports), integration into airspace and other modes of transportation, and competition with shared automated vehicles. This article discusses the results of a demand analysis examining the market potential of two potential AAM passenger markets—airport shuttles and air taxis. The airport shuttle market envisions AAM passenger service to, from, or between airports along fixed routes. The air taxi market envisions a more mature and scaled service that provides on-demand point-to-point passenger services throughout urban areas. Using a multi-method approach consisting of AAM travel demand modeling, Monte Carlo simulations, and constraint analysis, this study estimates that the air taxi and airport shuttle markets could capture a 0.5% mode share. The analysis concludes that AAM could replace non-discretionary trips greater than 45 min; however, demand for discretionary trips would be limited by consumer willingness to pay. This study concludes that AAM passenger services could have a daily demand of 82,000 passengers served by approximately 4000 four- to five-seat aircraft in the U.S., under the most conservative scenario, representing an annual market valuation of 2.5 billion USD. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Air Mobility for Innovative and Sustainable Transport Systems)

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20 pages, 6304 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Potential Urban Air Mobility Travel Time Savings: An Exploratory Analysis of Munich, Paris, and San Francisco

by Raoul Rothfeld, Mengying Fu, Miloš Balać and Constantinos Antoniou

Sustainability 2021, 13(4), 2217; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su13042217 - 19 Feb 2021

Cited by 40 | Viewed by 5452

Abstract

The advent of electrified, distributed propulsion in vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft promises aerial passenger transport within, into, or out of urban areas. Urban air mobility (UAM), i.e., the on-demand concept that utilizes eVTOL aircraft, might substantially reduce travel times when compared to ground-based transportation. Trips of three, pre-existent, and calibrated agent-based transport scenarios (Munich Metropolitan Region, Île-de-France, and San Francisco Bay Area) have been routed using the UAM-extension for the multi-agent transport simulation (MATSim) to calculate congested trip travel times for each trip’s original mode—i.e., car or public transport (PT)—and UAM. The resulting travel times are compared and allow the deduction of potential UAM trip shares under varying UAM properties, such as the number of stations, total process time, and cruise flight speed. Under base-case conditions, the share of motorized trips for which UAM would reduce the travel times ranges between 3% and 13% across the three scenarios. Process times and number of stations heavily influence these potential shares, where the vast majority of UAM trips would be below 50 km in range. Compared to car usage, UAM’s (base case) travel times are estimated to be competitive beyond the range of a 50-minute car ride and are less than half as much influenced by congestion. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Air Mobility for Innovative and Sustainable Transport Systems)

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