On Urban Air Mobility Networks

Growing urbanization as well as growing population are one reason for growing traffic congestions. Nowadays, in the city of Hamburg, the average driver spends up to 61 percent more time in traffic. Urban Air Mobility (UAM) is a novel approach to bypass the ground traffic by using aerial vehicles. A key factor for success is a robust and efficient network design, which is the focus of a work package in the HorizonUAM project. In the scope of the first Symposium, first results and methodologies, i.e. for vertiport placement and network metrics, as well as the future vision for the ongoing work will be presented. The overarching approach of the work package is a comparison of two 'rivalling' network design methodologies: the slot- and trajectory-based network design. The former focuses on the time management on defined routes by using a slot-based approach, similar to scheduled ways of transport, whereas the latter has the entire 4D trajectory management at its core, allowing for density-based type of operations. At the symposium, a direct comparison cannot be shown but the expected results include a validated statement on the advantages and disadvantages of the two methodologies. The reference city for this study is Hamburg. In order to find out under what circumstances an urban aerial transfer is more efficient, i.e. takes a shorter overall time compared to a private transport, a comparative simulation study for those two means of transport has been carried out in the reference city. The aerial and corresponding ground traffic connections are scheduled to start at the same time, allowing a comparison between the two metrics travel time and trip length. For the pure trip time, i.e. without additional time for (de-)boarding, a saving of 50%, and for the trip length, a saving of up to 16% could be derived from the simulation data. The full paper has been presented at the AIAA Aviation 2021 conference and published afterwards