Geometric Approach Towards Airspace Assessment for Emerging Operations

What is it about?

This paper introduces a geometric approach to identify potentially “available” airspace for emerging Urban Air Mobility operators in the presence of seven features of airspace that may preclude these new operations (i.e., airspace constructs). Four hypothetical Air Traffic Management scenarios are developed that prescribe different degrees of integration. 3D mappings of airspace availability are developed. 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 available airspace to separation or trajectory conformance requirements, and flight route design, throughput estimation and risk analysis.

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