A Geometric Approach Towards Airspace Assessment for Emerging Operations

Abstract

Emerging Urban Air Mobility (UAM)operators propose to introduce extensive flight networks into metropolitan airspace.However,this airspace currently contains complex legacy airspace constructs and flight operations that are perceived as safe, efficient, and generally acceptable to the overflown public. Hence, Air Traffic Management (ATM) concepts to support UAM may be constrained to cause little to no interference with these legacy operations. The identification of airspace that is non-interfering and potentially “available” to these new operators is therefore a critical first step to support UAM integration.This paper introduces a geometric airspace assessment approach that considers seven existing airspace constructs. Four hypothetical ATM scenarios are developed that prescribe different degrees of UAM integration. An alpha-shape topological method is refined to process geometrically complex airspace construct polygons over an expansive geographic area and develop 3D mappings of airspace availability.The approach is demonstrated in the San Francisco Bay Area and is readily extensible to other locations. It is envisioned to be useful in identification of viable takeoff and landing sites, evaluation of the sensitivity of airspace availability to separation or trajectory conformance requirements, and flight route design, throughput estimation and riskanalysis.