Weather Impact Assessment for Urban Aerial Trips in Metropolitan Areas

Abstract

View Video Presentation: https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2021-3176.vid Weather conditions in metropolitan areas influence Urban Aerial Mobility (UAM) oper- ations, passenger ride comfort, and the potential UAM market sizes. The success of UAM operations depends on reliable services under different urban weather conditions. However, the correlation between commuter travel patterns and daily weather patterns creates various impact levels. Hence, this study builds a UAM weather impact assessment module based on urban traveling traffic patterns and climatic conditions. The weather module can quantify the weather impact level, identify the most critical weather conditions, and help experts identify po- tential technology solutions. By taking the Chicago and Dallas regions as examples, the results show that the Chicago region is not preferable for UAM services (53% chance of unimpacted trips) in the winter than in the Dallas region (67% chance of unimpacted trips). The most severe weather phenomena are low temperature, snow, and low visibility in Chicago, while the “wind 15-20 knots” is the most common bad weather condition in both areas. Some existing technologies might mitigate the weather impacts; however, a more detailed analysis relies on the technical details of UAM vehicle designs.