Outcomes

Inspired by the EC’s Better Regulation Guidelines & Toolbox but also capitalising on work in EU programmes (e.g. in TEAM_Play, Technology Evaluator in Clean Sky 1 & 2, and SESAR), this toolbox describes a way of working for conducting holistic impact assessments and monitoring of European R&I in aviation. That is, it sets out the requirements for the key steps in the complete cycle of performing such assessments and monitoring, and provides guidance, tips and best practice.

The Impact Monitor Toolbox contributes to conducting coherent and holistic impact assessments and monitoring of European R&I in aviation in a systematic way, with the aim to become the reference choice for technology and policy assessment and monitoring of the environmental-, economic- and societal-impact of European R&I in aviation.

WP3 successfully developed and implemented the technical foundations for an collaborative impact assessment framework in aviation research. In this context, distributed networks of design and analysis tools from experts at different locations were collaboratively planned using web-based systems for workflow architecting and executed remotely, taking into account both performance and security aspects. The Impact Monitor project significantly enhanced the capabilities of the Common Parametric Aircraft Configuration Schema (CPACS) to model the complexity of air transportation systems.

Impact Monitor has proven that large-scale collaboration successfully works if based on common data standards (CPACS), advanced workflow architecting (MDAX), and performant and secure execution of distributed networks of disciplinary design and analysis tools (RCE uplink and BRICS technologies).

The developed framework is for the first time based on a central data exchange format, CPACS, which serves as a central source of truth. This reduces ambiguity in the data and speeds up the connection of new partners and disciplines in an impact assessment study. Furthermore, the remote execution of tools at different locations has proven to be secure, robust and efficient.

Impact Monitor focused on establishing the technical means for efficient impact assessment in aviation. Beyond the technical achievements, much experience has been gained and documented in working in large, distributed teams. This has led to advanced processes for setting up new research studies and improved documentation and training materials for the technologies used (see Impact Monitor Academy).

Illustration of how the central data exchange model (CPACS) hierarchically combines data for vehicles, airports, flights, and schedule, to provide a scalable description of the air transportation system in all its details.
Technical illustration of how the Impact Monitor Framework is composed of three different categories. The data model serves as a central source of truth which enables efficient tool interfacing. The framework itself comprised efficient and secure execution of distributed computer networks (workflows) as well as data management solutions. The third category concerns the dashboard for interactive results visualization.

The aviation industry, a dynamic and complex sector, relies heavily on data-driven decision-making. To address this need, a surge of data analytics tools and platforms has emerged, providing real-time insights and decision support for aviation professionals. However, the main limitations with the existing state of the art tools include:

  • Lack of real-time interaction with datasets, making it difficult for users to perform live decision-making and exploration.
  • Most tools provide static visualization with limited flexibility. They often lack the ability to modify visual elements dynamically. Therefore, these can be used as mainly post-processing applications, lacking real-time interaction with design studies.
  • Tools like RECCE and Cascade do not allow users to import or analyze external datasets or perform detailed case-specific studies.
  • Existing tools either focused on high-level decision-making for policymakers or highly technical for researchers, not both. These tools do not support a multilayered approach where users can switch between high-level and detailed component analysis.

An interactive web-based Dashboard Application was developed for Impact Assessments of future/novel aircraft transport system through visual data analytics. Few of the main achievements include:

  • Formal requirement gathering for the functionality and business demands and must haves, with all the partners and stakeholders.
  • Development of user intuitive Dashboard Application to serve the need for visualizations, interactivity, dashboard creation, what if analysis, multicriteria decision making tool etc.
  • Integration with cloud storage to store and download CPACS and other relevant files for visualization.

The development of a novel web-based dashboard application provided a top-down and bottom-up multilayer approach, enabling comprehensive analysis at various levels (aircraft, airline, airport, and air traffic management) and supporting what-if scenarios and trade-off studies. Some of the salient features include:

  • Interactive Design Space Exploration
  • Advanced Visualization Capabilities
  • Comprehensive Trade-Off Studies

The dashboard's flexible architecture, multilayered design, and interactive data exploration capabilities have demonstrated significant improvements in decision-making efficiency. By integrating both high-level insights for decision-makers and detailed data analysis for researchers, the tool supports a broader range of stakeholders in the aviation industry.

The Dashboard Application demonstrates the capabilities to enable the user in performing informed decision making and trade-off analysis for the air transport systems, i.e., aircraft, airline, airport, and airspace.

WP5 succeeded on developing comprehensive, multi-level demonstration use cases showcasing the capabilities of the framework at the aircraft, airport, and air transport system levels. All three use cases (UCs) target an environmental, economic and/or societal impact assessment of an exemplary (although hypothetical) R&I innovation in aviation, covering one or more assessment levels (i.e., aircraft, airport and/or air-transport system level).

  • The first UC focused on “Aircraft technology/concepts” stream, through modelling and simulation of novel aircraft concepts with advanced propulsion systems.
  • The second UC focused on “ATM and aircraft operations” stream through modelling and simulated the impact of Continuous Descent Operations (CDO) at aircraft and airport levels.
  • The last UC focused on “Policies/regulations/market-based measures” stream through modelling and simulation of an impact assessment at air-transport system level of different policies for the uptake of sustainable aviation fuels.

In the frame of the project, use case studies including models, scenarios, and metrics selection have been defined, while associated workflows have been created to be integrated in the Impact Monitor Framework. Using all the technologies from WP3, collaborative cross organizational workflows have been run and studies performed. Results from the studies have been post-processed and visualized through the interactive Dashboard.

These Ucs have allowed the Impact Monitor Framework to demonstrate its capabilities to assessing the impact of such R&I at the appropriate assessment level(s). Moreover, almost fifteen different models from all the partners are now compliant with the Impact Monitor framework covering all assessment levels, providing a variety of metrics ready to be integrated into new assessment workflows in follow-on projects.

Illustration of the coverage of assessment levels by the 3 demonstration Use Cases.

UC1 – Advanced Propulsion System

UC2 – Continous Descent Operations

UC3 – Sustainable Aviation Fuel

Illustration of the three collaboratives workflows dedicated to the three demonstrations Use Case. Each visualization represented the coupling between the models coming from different partners in terms of CPACS data.

This work package focused on two main pillars, both opting for characterizing the potential benefits and supporting evaluation of the current R&I development path referring to Aviation goals.

  1. The identification of the most relevant R&I initiatives related to advanced aircraft concepts, new technologies and optimised operational solutions, strictly related to the topics envisaged in “HORIZON-CL5-2022-D5-01-14”. This information collected by both a top-down and a bottom-up approach provides a representative panorama of the recent and on-going innovation initiatives for the air transport sector referring to the monitoring assessment topics.
  2. The identification of possible Stakeholders, Point of Contacts, Project Coordinators, Leaders and/or involved Specialists that could concur with their direct experience to plan, manage and upgrade the IM Toolkit, taking into account their needs, field of interest and availability to collaborate in Impact Monitor.

In line with these main outcomes, the WP2 achievements can be summarized as follows:

  • Definition and application of a methodology to identify and analyze a set of relevant R&I initiatives, which are devoted to assess cleaner technologies or greener aviation products, operations & policies referring to climate change and the protection of ecosystems;
  • Identification of Interfaces & Communication Requirements of Stakeholders /Aviation Communities;
  • Creation of a specific R&I projects dataset to collect, identify and classify the information related to European research initiatives and their attributes;
  • Classification of the collected Stakeholders’ needs referring to the impact assessment fields of interest;
  • Amplifying Stakeholders’ involvement in supporting impact assessment tasks.

The implemented methodology allows to support the identification of a set of innovative solutions in terms of relevance. These innovations could be considered and managed in an integrated way in order to perform the impact assessment activities internally to the developed IM open-source framework.

This framework is based on a collaborative and interactive collaborative distributed structure, and it is capable to assess new/advanced aircraft concepts aiming to: achieve climate neutrality by 2050; limit greenhouse gas emissions, air quality & noise by 2035; improve transport connectivity; expand EU aviation R&I collaboration and enable impact assessments strongly devoted to develop and validate the possible impacts. The identified R&I projects have been sorted in terms of relative relevance and level of coverage referring to several themes of interest in Impact Monitoring. The relative relevance has been evaluated based on Specialists and Stakeholders’ feedback. Moreover, the coverage level has been evaluated taking into account the number of projects relevant to the IM topics and their applicability to the Air transport driver themes e.g. most important targets, allocated priorities to key performance or sustainability area, competing objectives of the ATS vs time horizon, in relation to scientific area, enablers suitable to support the civil commercial air transport development in a sustainable way, descriptive parameters, adopted relevance levels and several other aspects.

Distribution of the selected projects referring to the related framework programme.
Estimated distribution in percentage of the global relevance of the set of projects referring to the most important targets for aviation in the coming decades
Evaluated global ranking of the considered competing objectives of the ATS. The competing objectives with larger relevance appear to be: “Transport performance” and “Environmental sustainability” with 38.1% and 36.0% respectively
Evaluated relative relevance of the selected projects in terms of priorities referring to the key performance areas in Aviation. It shows that the “Efficiency” is at top level with a 37.1%.