Measuring U-space social and environmental impact

Abstract

U-space will enable urban air mobility (UAM) on a wide scale, facilitating a variety of use cases (e.g., medical and emergency transport, delivery of goods, passenger transport services). Social acceptance and impact on citizens is not completely understood in this growing scenario. Current U-space performance frameworks include indicators to evaluate UAM’s environmental impact. However, they are still too generic and aggregated to properly capture the broad variety of impacts of UAM operations. The goal of the MUSE (Measuring U-space Social and Environmental Impact) project is to develop a set of performance indicators (PIs), methods and tools for the assessment of the impact of UAM operations on the quality of life in European cities. The project is expected to establish the basis for a future U-space service that supports the minimisation of UAM’s negative social and environmental externalities. This general goal can be translated into the following specific objectives: (i) to define a set of PIs able to capture the full range of UAM impacts on citizens’ quality of life; (ii) to develop new tools for the measurement and forecasting of the proposed PIs; and (iii) to showcase and evaluate the capabilities of the new tools developed by MUSE through their application to a set of case studies in the city of Madrid.