Supporting Advanced Air Mobility (AAM)

[schnuerle]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

How can MDS be used to support Urban/Advanced Air Mobility (UAM/AAM) in local jurisdictions? We are in an information gathering phase for this so please leave any and all thoughts on this below as a comment so we can discuss as a community and with the MDS working group. What are your use cases and scope and jurisdiction for this?

Describe the solution you'd like

Ensure MDS can support AAM as it is now, and what parts of MDS may need to be changed to support AAM use cases.

Is this a breaking change

• Maybe

Describe alternatives you've considered

• MDS was built to support shared mobility in the right of way.
• We are exploring the connection between AAM and MDS as a digital policy and management tool.
• MDS is close to supporting AAM now as a Passenger Service, but needs more information about height and vehicle properties.

Additional context

• OMF is convening and facilitating these discussions on Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) in our working groups (part 1, part 2).
• The original vision of the OMF - to be both proactive and reactive for city right of way management.
• This is an opportunity to be proactive with AAM, as it’s not deployed yet.
• Like we have done for other new transportation modes we are in an information gathering phase for the OMF community.

Resources
Review materials from LADOT, Urban Movement Labs, American Planning Association, OMF:

• Principles of the Urban Sky
• LADOT's UAM Policy Framework Considerations
• APA Planning for Advanced Mobility
• Working Group Part 1
• Working Group Part 2

Questions

• Who do you need to bring in from your orgs to this conversation?
• What operational data do cities believe they need?
• What challenges and policies will cities need data to support?
• What digital policy do cities need to publish for operators?
• What do cities need to know and share with the public to allow this to ‘fly’ politically?
• What laws are in place now? City, city council, local, state, federal, etc?
• What challenges or opportunities are there for navigation to airports, and CMAP regional planning?

Use Cases

• Understand best locations for vertiports and transit connectivity
• Emergency response no-fly zones
• Safety reporting and incident analysis
• Adherence to policies, rules, and geofencing
• Assessing fees, incentives, and revenue sharing
• Deployment and usage in Justice 40 areas to meet equity goals

[geneorama]

• This is an opportunity to be proactive with AAM, as it’s not deployed yet.

This has been coming up again and again with AI, and I am finding that it's important to take a principle based approach. Relating scenarios back to principles makes it easier to evaluate options and make decisions.

The World Economic Forum's principles are clear, meaningful, and relatable; which is excellent for real world application: https://www.weforum.org/publications/principles-of-the-urban-sky/principles-of-the-urban-sky/

Also, I love how Clint Harper described the Pillars of the FAA's focus: (airspace, aircraft, operations, infrastructure, community), and how the FAA governs differently in those pillars. the first three are regulation driven, second two are a shared focus.

I think that is a useful framework for bifurcating the topic into meaningful components.

My only other thought for now is that I wonder if we can consider policy though the lens of user based use cases. For example,

• "I am a planner, and I want to have access to node to node air transit data according to specific criteria, in a privacy preserving format that maintains fidelity for decision evaluation."
• "I am a parent, and I want to make sure that my children can play in parks and playground without fear of surveillance, and free from noise"
• "I'm a community member with concerns or good ideas, and I want to have a forum for recourse or to contribute to planning."
• "I'm purchasing a house and I want to know how much air traffic is allowed in corridors near my house, and what their schedules are."
• "I'm a landlord and I want to know if I am authorized to use emergency response vehicles to respond to situations such as high rise flooding, or broken windows, so that I can quickly ensure the safety of people in and around my building in the event of an emergency."

Maybe these are good examples, and maybe not. But thinking though specific situations helps illuminate where flexibility and inflexibility is necessary in the absence of lived experience and evidence.

[hrishiballal]

This will be an interesting extension to the MDS specification, there exists open-source projects and standards to support to support traffic management and I see lots of synergies. I as maintainer of a couple of open source projects around aerial traffic management am looking forward to tracking and following these discussions.