This research was commissioned by the Connected Places Catapult, a research and development organisation working on behalf of the UK government, and Egis, which provides engineering services in the field of urban development, and produced by the Open Data Institute, an independent non-profit institute working with companies and governments to build an open, trustworthy data ecosystem, where people can make better decisions using data and manage any harmful impacts.
ODI commissioned Whythawk as data interoperability technical experts to lead research into the specific data and interoperability infrastructure, standards and policies necessary to support future air mobility.
Our solution
We relied on a variety of research methods, including:
- Literature review: Our team reviewed existing literature and technical standards on the future of air mobility, including studies on aviation, smart cities, and surveys on the industry.
- Stakeholder interviews: We conducted 10 interviews with industry stakeholders operating in air traffic management, data aggregation, software and digital twin development, drone operations, infrastructure development, academia.
A review of this nature is necessarily incomplete. It can raise issues and highlight mechanisms by which they may be resolved, or further avenues to seek resolution, but it cannot cover everything, or in any depth. Insights drawn from a digital twin are only as good as the source data that goes into it. The focus here is not on building one, but on ensuring that the assumptions and data that go into it are reliable, consistent, and complete.
Outcomes
We made a number of recommendations as part of our report:
- Airspace management capability
- Enforce standards to avoid lock-in to software or technical monopolies
- Openly-licence technology and research developed with grant-based funds
- Support open-source technical development organisations
- Produce multiple schema subsets for specific UTM and ATM operations
- Increase accessibility of UTM flight-planning submissions
- Environment and sustainability
- Develop and use openly-accessible baseline environmental telemetry
- Engage aviation and local authority stakeholders to adopt a unified schema
- Airport and smart city management
- Build aviation operational experience in cities by first building ground experience
- Develop interoperability and collaboration between cities and airports
- Ensure adoption with incentives and compliance
