Urban Air Mobility

Go to Course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/urban-air-mobility

Introduction

**Course Review: Urban Air Mobility on Coursera** In an age where urbanization presents both challenges and opportunities, the course "Urban Air Mobility" offered on Coursera stands out as a comprehensive exploration of how aerial transport can mitigate congestion in our burgeoning cities. With an estimated 60% of the world's population anticipated to live in urban environments by 2030, this course addresses a pressing question: how can we enhance mobility and ensure that our infrastructure can support rapid growth? ### Course Overview The course opens with an engaging introduction to Urban Air Mobility (UAM), defining the concept and detailing the critical components that make it viable. From vehicle design to air traffic management, the syllabus is rich and varied, presenting insights from seasoned experts in multiple domains. With contributions from notable institutions and researchers, including Dr. Kay Plötner from Bauhaus Luftfahrt Munich and industry insights from Dr. Markus May of Airbus, learners gain an authoritative perspective on the intersection of technology, policy, and public acceptance. ### Syllabus Breakdown 1. **Introduction to Urban Air Mobility**: This module lays the groundwork, introducing UAM's fundamentals and tackling the essential factors such as designs, safety, sustainability, and integration into urban contexts. 2. **Industry Perspectives**: Dr. Markus May provides an in-depth view of Airbus's efforts in UAM, sharing innovative prototypes and the creative processes within corporate environments. This module highlights the industry's current trends and future directions. 3. **Political Perspectives**: Here, learners explore the legal frameworks and government policies that shape UAM in Germany. This context is crucial for understanding how policy can either foster or hinder technological advancements in urban mobility. 4. **Demand Modeling for UAM**: Dr. Laurie Garrow leads this module, which delves into predictive modeling of travel demand, a key component for businesses looking to enter the UAM market. 5. **Aviation Management**: This module discusses operational challenges faced by airports and airlines, introducing students to decision-making frameworks necessary for navigating the complex landscape of air mobility. 6. **Traffic Management for UAM**: Dr. Bernd Korn presents principles of traffic management specific to UAM, including the design of vertiports and urban airspace. 7. **Urban Planning**: This segment focuses on integrating UAM infrastructure with existing transport systems, addressing public acceptance and environmental concerns that come with dense urban construction. 8. **Understanding Acceptance of UAM**: Understanding societal sentiment towards new transportation modes is critical. This module equips learners with techniques to assess and enhance user acceptance. 9. **Air Mobility Trajectory Planning**: Professor Rodrigues details the complexities of trajectory planning, examining how various factors contribute to safe and efficient air travel. 10. **Economics of Urban Air Mobility**: With the emergence of eVTOL vehicles, this module discusses the economic underpinnings necessary for a successful UAM landscape. ### Course Experience and Learning Outcomes The structure of the course is such that it balances theoretical knowledge with practical applications. Videos, case studies, and expert interviews enrich the learning process, making complex concepts accessible. Engaging content keeps learners invested while providing a well-rounded understanding of the multifaceted aspects of UAM. **Who Should Enroll?** This course is ideal for professionals and students in urban planning, transportation engineering, aerospace studies, public policy, and anyone interested in the future of urban mobility. It offers valuable insights for stakeholders involved in UAM development, regulatory bodies, and private enterprises seeking to innovate within the transportation sector. **Recommendation** I highly recommend the "Urban Air Mobility" course on Coursera for its thorough exploration of a transformative field. Not only does it equip you with the knowledge required to understand and engage in discussions about UAM, but it also prepares you to contribute to potential solutions that might redefine transportation in metropolitan areas. The collaboration between academia and industry gives this course a unique edge, ensuring that you are learning from the forefront of research as well as practical, real-world applications. For more information and to enroll in the course, please visit the [Urban Air Mobility course on Coursera](https://www.coursera.org/learn/urban-air-mobility). Don't miss this opportunity to be a part of shaping the future of urban transportation!

Syllabus

Introduction - What is Urban Air Mobility?

This first course module gives an overview of all aspects that define "Urban Air Mobility". It explains the concept of Urban Air Mobiltiy as well as all crucial factors, such as vehicle and power train design, infrastructure and vertiport design, air traffic management, the ensuring of safety and airworthiness, sustainability, use cases and concept of operations, city integration and ground transport connection and political support and public acceptance. - Dr Kay Plötner (Bauhaus Luftfahrt Munich).

In five chapters, Dr. Markus May presents the approach to the topic of Urban Air Mobility from an industry perspective and shows the ideas of Airbus in this context. Dr. May describes the different design ideas that Airbus has developed with Vahana and the CityAirbus. It also explains how Airbus managed to create a creative workings space in a corporate environment.

In this module, the Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport presents the national policies and the legal framework for Urban Air Mobility in Germany. The course also discusses the German Federal Government's action plan on "Unmanned Aircraft Systems and Innovative Aviation Concepts", as well as the digital platform “dipul” on unmanned aviation. The course will additionally focus on legal requirements, especially with regard to obstacles for the breakthrough of urban air mobility. The module concludes with an interview on what the future of urban air mobility will look like. // The course lecturers are Dr. Jan Dirks, Dipl.-Ing. Christoph Noack, Rahel Jünemann and Dr. Daniel Phiesel.

This course describes different approaches and data used to model travel demand. An introduction to discrete choice models is provided. An example of demand prediction for an air taxi commuting service is provided. The example uses a discrete choice model and location-based data from a telecommunications company to predict demand in the 40 largest cities in the U.S. /// Dr. Laurie Garrow is an expert in air travel behavior and market analysis. She is a Professor and Co-Director of the Center for Urban and Regional Air Mobility at Georgia Tech and owner of Atlanta Analytics. She has more than 20 years of experience in aviation and previously worked at United Airlines.

Decision makers at airports and airlines face many challenges and require support to deal with these effectively and appropriately. This gives rise to a variety of difficult and interesting problems. This module looks at three big classes of problems and discusses applicable general solution approaches. // Maximilian Moll’s research focuses on reinforcement learning, one of the three areas in machine learning. His particular interest in this area are combinations with classical methods of operations research as well as application opportunities for prescriptive analytics. The latter pushes past predictive analytics in the sense that it does not only try to predict the future but also to suggest optimum actions to be taken now.He leads the research group “Data-Driven Aviation Management” at Munich Aerospace as well as the working group “Simulation and Optimization of Complex Systems” of the German Society for Operations Research.

Dr. Bernd Korn (German Aerospace Center Braunschweig): This module is about understanding how traffic management for urban air mobility could work and what conditions need to be designed in an urban environment. A special focus is on the topics of the U-space in Europe, the design of vertidromes and the functioning of ground infrastructure. In addition, the module ventures a look into the future and describes possible traffic scenarios in our cities.

Building safe and efficient Urban Air Mobility (UAM) vehicles is quite complex. It is equally challenging integrating vertiports required for UAM vehicles taking off and landing into the urban fabric. While it is possible to include vertiports in transport and land use planning processes, it is quite difficult finding suitable spaces in dense urban areas (where high demand is to be expected) and, at the same time, gaining public acceptance, reducing negative impact such as noise, negative visual effects and safety issues. This module explains the common transport and land use planning processes that are required for building UAM vertiports. Their integration into and competition with existing modes of transport is discussed as well. Inducing demand and simulation results are also explained. // Professor Rolf Moeckel, Associate Professor (Travel Behavior) at Technical University of Munich since 2021; Rudolf Mößbauer Professorship from September 2015 until August 2021; Post-Doctoral Research at National Center for Smart Growth/University of Maryland, USA from August 2013 until August 2015; Doctorate at Institute of Spatial Planning/University of Dortmund, Germany from Julie 2002 until September 2006 (awarded with the 2007 University Dissertation Prize); Diploma at Department of Spatial Planning/University of Dortmund, Germany from October 1998 until August 2000 and from August 2001 until June 2002; Fulbright Scholar (Visiting Graduate Student) at University of Washington/Seattle, USA from September 2000 until July 2001.

This course covers a range of topics related to determining the demand for previously unavailable modes of transport, such as UAM. Collecting user preferences via the stated preference method and using the results of discrete choice models are some examples. User and societal acceptance are other aspects along with practical examples of ways to assess and interpret them. // Constantinos Antoniou is a Full Professor at the Chair of Transportation Systems Engineering at Technical University of Munich (TUM), Germany. He holds a Diploma in Civil Engineering from NTUA (1995), a MS in Transportation (1997) and a PhD in Transportation Systems (2004), both from MIT. His research focuses on modelling and optimization of transportation systems, data analytics and machine learning for transportation systems. He has a proven track record in attracting competitive funding, both on national and international levels as well as serving as PI for several research projects such as H2020 iDREAMS, MOMENTUM, Drive2thefuture, DFG DVanPool and Trampa. He has authored more than 400 scientific publications, including more than 150 papers in international, peer-reviewed journals as well as 250 publications relating to international conference proceedings, 3 books and has contributed to 20 book chapters.

Professor Rodrigues from Concordia University in Montreal presents the basics of trajectory planning, also, he describes how infrastructure, social acceptance, sustainability, flight data and air traffic management, as well as the regulation and certification serve as most important pillars in air mobility. Besides important considerations, he looks at the system architecture and puts a special focus on various aspects such as flight management or trajectory without collisions.

For many decades Urban Air Mobility (UAM) has been addressed through the use of conventional helicopters. However, the emergence of eVTOL vehicles signals that UAM is on the verge of radical transformation regarding its scale of operation, mainly due to reduced noise pollution and an improved cost structure. This module discusses some of the economic conditions (cost, demand, finance) that must be met for market viability of eVTOL vehicles in passenger transportation networks. // Humberto Bettini is Professor at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. He is a B.S. and Ph.D. in Economics, and a M.Sc. in Transportation Engineering. He teaches Cost Accounting, Principles of Economics and Microeconomics, while his research concentrates on competitive and innovative aspects of air transportation and the airline industry.