Urban Air Mobility Airspace Dynamic Density

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Urban Air Mobility Airspace Dynamic Density

L. Spirkovska / C. S. Kulkarni / J. Watkins / L. Martin

Effective flight planning requires information about a variety of potential threats, such as adverse weather or airspace restrictions, and about alternatives available if unforeseen events occur. Expected traffic along the route of flight is also essential to a safe outcome so that, for example, adequate fuel/energy supply can be loaded prior to flight. A dynamic density (DD) metric is introduced for the emerging urban air mobility (UAM) concept to predict airspace congestion that may lead to loss of separation between aircraft or less efficient operations. Using inspiration from dynamic density metric research for traditional air traffic management and a two-way highway analogy, we develop a dynamic density metric for a portion of airspace (aUAM corridor) that aggregates the impact from five factors: aircraft density, density of populous clusters, mean number of aircraft in populous clusters, mean distance between aircraft, and minimum distance between aircraft. This works describes our methodology, rationale, use cases, and visualization techniques to efficiently present the DD metric to an operator for informed decision making. We also present an approach for validating the metric. However, validation remains part of future work.