Vertidrome Airside Level of Service: Impact of Disruptions and Stochastic Deviations on Vertiport Operations

Abstract

Hundreds of different electric vertical take-off and landing vehicle (eVTOL) concepts are currently under development in order to serve a future mode of transport: Urban Air Mobility. Technological developments and certification capabilities of emerging eVTOL concepts reached a development stage which might allow first European UAM operations in the next 3-5 years [1]. Contradicting to this fact, a comprehensive set of rules and regulations about vertiport design specifics, operational procedures and performance requirements is currently lacking. However, vertiports being designed to accommodate special requirements and performances of eVTOL traffic will be the crucial interface to preceding/subsequent ground transportation. We have developed the Vertidrome Airside Level of Service (VALoS) concept to assess how well a future vertidrome facility and its operation will serve a given demand forecast [2]. As a next step, we now implement an exemplary vertiport concept in a laboratory environment using a “vertiport-in-the-lab” approach in order to study the impact of changes in decisive parameters on the VALoS. A discrete event-based simulation (DES) is used to describe the vertiport with all relevant elements and procedures, to model the traffic processes of the “vertiport-in-the-lab” and to measure and collect performance relevant data of specific traffic scenarios. Subsequently, a VALoS impact analysis is conducted to get insights about the behavior of both the selected vertiport layout and its operational concept and how the level of service is responding to short-term disruptions and stochastic deviations e.g. temporary vehicle failures or clearance delays. As a result, critical elements of the vertiport and its operation are identified and basic requirements for design and operational concepts are formulated.