Urban geometry as constraint: Optimizing vertiport placement for urban air mobility

Abstract

Vertiport planning in Urban Air Mobility (UAM) is critical to meet future travel demands, particularly within multimodal transportation systems. However, studies have yet to incorporate the physical constraints imposed by real-world geographical and building features. This paper presents an integrated modeling framework to accurately determine optimal vertiport locations and scales while explicitly accounting for building geometry constraints. A weighted K -means model is applied to capture multimodal UAM demand, and a service buffer zone is adopted to identify candidate sites. A geometry-based capacity estimation method employing a grid search algorithm is introduced to calculate the maximum number of Touchdown and Lift-Off areas (TLOFs) in accordance with regulatory requirements. A case study using data from Shanghai shows that vertiport siting feasibility is highly sensitive to buffer radius, while capacity constraints mainly influence construction scale and costs. Comparisons between the area-based (geometry-agnostic) and geometry-based methods reveal that ignoring building geometry leads to a 100% error rate, as none of the selected sites can accommodate the assigned number of TLOFs. These findings highlight the necessity of incorporating building geometry into capacity estimation. Overall, the proposed framework offers a generalizable and practical tool to support the design of UAM infrastructure that is both cost-efficient and physically feasible.