REFMAP aims to develop a digital service for quantifying and minimizing the environmental footprint of air mobility at a “multi-scale” level. The core objective is to create an online platform through widespread collaboration with international partners to optimize both individual flight trajectories (micro-scale), such as unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), and overall air traffic (macro-scale). The research conducted in REFMAP will investigate a new aviation business model and how this model is affected by environmental data (e.g. weather, local pollution, wind intensity), emissions from different types of air vehicles (such as CO2 emissions or noise), and their trajectories.
The analytics platform will implement numerical simulations, predictive models, and deep-learning methods. The latter will help to (i) predict the optimal trajectories given a series of environmental data and (ii) develop a business model aligned with the EU’s Green Agenda.
The overall objectives of REFMAP are:
1). To produce robust real-time artificial intelligence (AI) models that optimize environmental performance in multi-scale air traffic management (ATM), including data exchanges with U-space. These models will be trained using multi-fidelity flow data;
2). To develop a framework that facilitates the responsible, sustainable, interoperable, coordinated, and safe expansion of the UAS industry;
3). To model the noise of commercial aviation and drones (as novel air technology) and define targets for trajectory optimization to minimize the impact on exposed communities and wildlife, ensuring a quieter, greener, and more sustainable aviation sector;
4). To develop innovative environmental key performance indicators (KPIs) related to multi-scale European aviation business;
5). To validate the newly developed models, services, and KPIs through large-scale simulations to assess their impact on existing ATM and emerging U-space services;
6). To align its functionalities and capabilities with the needs of aviation stakeholders to accelerate deployment and enable new aviation business models.
