Modeling UAM Scenarios for Urban Design

Abstract

Recent developments in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), including drone delivery services and air taxis, are revolutionizing urban transport, leading to a new field of research referred to as Urban Air Mobility (UAM). While several contemporary efforts to computationally model future scenarios for UAM exist, in this paper we argue that these models tend to be narrowly conceived as air-space design and management tools and provide little information on ground-level impacts. This paper describes an ongoing effort to create UAM modelling tools useful specifically to urban designers as part of a push toward integration of urban airspace design with ground-level master-planning. Current functions permit designers to visualize drone-fleet origin-corridor-destination routes, generate a strategic model of UAM noise, and compare tradeoffs between UAM system efficiency and noise.