European Transport Research Review / Assessing automated air-taxis for urban mobility

This paper explores the feasibility and potential implications of automated air-taxis as a new mode of urban transport. By applying flight simulation and operations research, we investigate different questions regarding travel time, travel costs, and transport sustainability. As practical application, we consider the transportation service between the city and the airport, as well as on-demand air-taxi services within the city of Vienna. We compare the air-taxis with gasoline taxis and e-taxis, as they serve analogous transportation needs and cater to a similar clientele. In our effort to assess the feasibility of air-taxis, we aim to answer crucial questions that will influence the future of urban transportation. Our study examines how efficient air-taxis are in reducing travel time and explores their cost dynamics, addressing the affordability for passengers and their value of travel time savings. Additionally, we investigate their environmental impact by looking into energy consumption and CO2 emissions. Through a rigorous analysis of empirical data and simulation outcomes, we aim to provide a comprehensive perspective that informs policy decisions and guides the evolution of urban transportation networks in the years to come.Bin Hu, Arno Fallast, Samuel Lesak (und 5 weitere)Version of recor

hiWALK and hiBIKE: Co-created Indices to Foster Active Mobility for All

Current accessibility analyses, which underlie the 15-minute city concept, assume that all streets are equally walkable and bikeable for everyone. This assumption implicitly neglects the needs of people with special mobility requirements, i.e. of the old and very young, people with disabilities, and risk-averse bikers. Stakeholders working to improve urban active mobility, e.g., NGOs such as Radlobby Austria or traffic planners such as PLANUM Fallast & Partner, require detailed information on the bikeability and walkability of the urban path network to lobby and/or plan for infrastructure that promotes active mobility and provides inclusive accessibility to essential services. To address this gap, HeiGIT’s climate action team works with practitioners and NGOs to co-create street-level indices of walkability (hiWalk) and bikeability (hiBike) with direct practical applications. Going beyond summary values at the level of cities or neighborhoods, our street-level indicators facilitate integrating bikeability and walkability information into routing engines, thereby supporting accessibility analyses of “15-minute cities for all“. Both hiWalk and hiBike incorporate indicators describing the urban street and path network in terms of user-friendliness, attractiveness, and safety. For example, the indicators identify walkable/bikeable paths and analyse their surface quality in terms of smoothness and type of material. hiBike also includes an indicator of “dooring” risk, based on street-side parking information. Both indices rely on open data sets, mainly OpenStreetMap (OSM), and can be tailored and applied across cities worldwide. Since both hiWALK and hiBIKE are still under development, rather than presenting the indices’ results, this paper will discuss the challenges encountered (1) during their application to starkly differing urban environments worldwide, and (2) due to the variability in OSM’s data quality and completeness across regions. Additionally, we present our co-creation approach and discuss its benefits for index usability and policy impact. Besides continuing to refine the two indices, future research will also focus on assessing whether the results of our analyses align with the perceived walkability and bikeability in different streets, neighbourhoods, and cities. We conclude that several unique features of hiWalk and hiBike distinguish them from existing indices of active mobility. hiWalk and hiBike prioritise accessibility for all, explicitly considering users with special mobility needs. Moreover, through our plan to integrate our indicators into OpenRouteService (ORS), the mobility needs of the most vulnerable will be effectively captured in accessibility analyses and routing decisions. Finally, and most importantly, our co-creation approach renders feedback from stakeholders during the development process, which ensures the relevance and usability of the indicators in real-world urban planning and advocacy applications

Automated trajectory generation and airport selection for an emergency landing procedure of a CS23 aircraft

Aircraft in general aviation usually are operated in single pilot mode. Especially, in case of an incapability of the pilot to control the aircraft, an automated emergency procedure is desirable in order to reduce the risk of fatalities. The finding of a solution for an emergency landing maneuver includes preselecting possible landing sites with regard to the available aircraft capabilities and creation of feasible trajectories to these sites. A search tree in four-dimensional search space with an efficient implementation of a rapidly exploring random tree algorithm (RRT*) is created. The algorithm performance is increased by use of basic geometrical sets to construct the final route as a combination of Dubins path segments. To further reduce the route length, a gradient based local optimization routine is added after completion of the RRT* algorithm. At the moment of creation, terrain avoidance is verified and accordance with legal airspace structure is considered. An emergency procedure is created by combining a selected landing site and a flyable trajectory to this site. Each of these combinations is scored, and the most promising emergency landing procedure is chosen and delivered to flight management system of the aircraft. The flight management system controls a full-authority auto-flight system that is capable of performing en-route flight and auto-land procedures as well.Fallast, Arno; Messnarz, BerndVersion of recor

The Entrepreneurial Student's Experience Journey Through Engineering Education

The goal of this paper is to present a new perspective on how to design entrepre-neurial education in a wider sense. By applying the method of “customer journey mapping”, which is widely used in the field of marketing, the perspective of the student (“customer”) is put into the centre of attention. It intends to raise aware-ness for a more holistic and customer-centric view of the entrepreneurship-related “customer experience”. &#x0D; The paper shows the limitations of existing tools and procedures and gives an outlook on possible tools to describe customer experience journey in entrepre-neurship education.</jats:p

The Entrepreneurial Student's Experience Journey Through Engineering Education

The goal of this paper is to present a new perspective on how to design entrepre-neurial education in a wider sense. By applying the method of “customer journey mapping”, which is widely used in the field of marketing, the perspective of the student (“customer”) is put into the centre of attention. It intends to raise aware-ness for a more holistic and customer-centric view of the entrepreneurship-related “customer experience”. The paper shows the limitations of existing tools and procedures and gives an outlook on possible tools to describe customer experience journey in entrepre-neurship education

The Entrepreneurial Student's Experience Journey Through Engineering Education

The goal of this paper is to present a new perspective on how to design entrepre-neurial education in a wider sense. By applying the method of “customer journey mapping”, which is widely used in the field of marketing, the perspective of the student (“customer”) is put into the centre of attention. It intends to raise aware-ness for a more holistic and customer-centric view of the entrepreneurship-related “customer experience”. The paper shows the limitations of existing tools and procedures and gives an outlook on possible tools to describe customer experience journey in entrepre-neurship education

Annoyance of Traffic Noise on Roads and Rail

Noise is one of the most frequently reported negative environmental effects of traffic. According to the current standards and calculation specifications, the impact of road and rail traffic noise is represented by the A-weighted energy-equivalent sound level (LA,eq). This quantity does not account for the subjective annoyance of sound events as it is perceived by the affected persons. The main focus of this research was to improve sound analysis methods in order to include the subjective effects, especially annoyance, caused by road and rail traffic noise. This improvement was made by the addition of consideration of psycho-acoustic findings to existing sound analysis methods. The result is a statistical parameter called traffic noise annoyance on roads and rail (TNAR), which should be considered for use in road and transport planning as a supplemental tool for better understanding the noise impacts of transportation projects. The tool should help engineers develop projects with reduced noise impacts. </jats:p

Evaluation of various means of transport for urban areas

Abstract Background Personal transportation in urban areas is characterised by different transportation technologies with significantly varying properties regarding usability, infrastructural requirements and environmental impacts. This characterisation motivates the objective evaluation of mobility solutions, based on different criteria. State of the art evaluations in the scientific literature mainly focus on one specific criterion at a time. The most common criteria investigated are found in energy demand or equivalent fuel consumption. Other parameters include the traffic space demand or mean velocity as a reference for the user-related criterion “travel time”. Since different modes of transport show various potentials in different criteria, an interesting point for scientific research is consideration of the different criteria in a more comprehensive evaluation approach. To address this issue, the aim of this study is to present a new approach for an objective evaluation and comparison of different transport technologies under consideration of pre-defined range of criteria and defined boundary conditions and requirements for personal mobility in cities. Besides technical-oriented aspects like driving range, transport capability and life cycle-related consumption of resources, additional factors influencing user-behaviour and traffic density are reflected. The evaluation method is presented, based on a generated exemplary data collection regarding technical and in-use characteristics of different modes of transport, mainly investigated in the city of Graz, Austria. Methods The study focuses on different means of transport, in particular walking, bicycling, the use of powered two-wheelers, passenger cars with different propulsion systems and public transport systems. It is based on the determination of selected criteria, considering ecologic, infrastructural and user-related aspects. With respect to ecologic criteria, the study considers resources and energy consumption as also the resulting CO2 equivalent emissions. The mean velocity and transport capacity are considered in the context of user-related criteria. Traffic space demand is an important and limited resource, especially in urban areas. The present study thus includes the determination and comparison of the relative traffic and parking space demands for the different modes of transport. The evaluation is based on a specifically developed evaluation methodology, considering weighted traffic performance indices, which are also proposed and discussed. Results Within the present study, a database providing specific mobility-related criteria and parameters has been generated, representing technical characteristics and the effects of the use of different vehicles and means of transportation in urban areas. The illustrated results allow an objective evaluation of a broad range of different means of transportation and vehicles, based on introduced “weighted traffic performance indices” (WTPI). Conclusions The study contributes to a discussion of transportation technologies and allows a derivation of measures for further research topics to face future intra-urban mobility demands. This represents a basis for decision making on the priorisation of the most suitable transport systems for urban areas. It is shown that the motorised individual passenger transport as dominated by the use of private passenger cars in particular represents today the most inefficient form of inner-urban mobility