May 5, 2023

The city council of Zaragoza has given the green light for the construction a vertiport, a hub for landing and take-off of drones in the city to transport goods and passengers. A first in Europe, according to the city council, which granted a ten-year lease permit for the use of a 7,500 square metres parking area south of the Zaragoza Expo.

The project is being developed as part of the European Commission-supported project for urban air mobility – U-ELCOME. U-ELCOME is to foster Europe-wide U-space implementation by gaining experience with the implementation of U1 and U2 U-space services, namely e-registration, e-identification, geofencing (U1) and flight preparation, flight authorisation, tracking, and integration with conventional air traffic control (U2). For this purpose, demonstrations are being developed across 15 locations in Spain, Italy, and France.

The vertiport in Zaragoza is the first of its kind to be created in the process. The construction and operation of the vertiport should allow gaining experience with the integration of electrically powered vertical take-off and landing aircraft (eVTOLs) in the urban environment. It also provides an opportunity to test new economic models. One of the first use cases that will be investigated concerns the transport of medical goods by means of drones.

The vertiport may be a first of its kind, but the city and specific site are not new as a testbed for drones. The site is already used as a training and testing ground for drones, hosting the Hera Drone Hub, which has been developed as part of the project Flying Forward 2020, which was also supported with EU funding.

According to the city, the creation of the drone hubs will provide new means for efficient and sustainable intermodal transport, shortening travel times drastically in the process. In addition, the city expects the project will contribute to creating knowledge and employment in Zaragoza, attracting companies to carry out high-tech validations, qualified employment and companies that want to complete the certification phase.

The promoters of the project have stressed that “Zaragoza becomes a scalable and exportable benchmark to other cities as an applicable example from the point of view of services, public-private collaborations and business models“.

Diverse roadmaps on Intelligent & Connected Vehicles have been released in recent years from different countries and regions, led by respective industry organisations as well as governments, playing a crucial role in the alignment among all sectors.

The International Communication and Cooperation Committee of ICV Roadmaps, co-chaired by the CCAM Partnership Chair Armin Graeter, published now the “White paper: ICV Roadmaps: A Worldwide Perspective“. The white paper outlines the main contents of these diverse ICV roadmaps, drawing on input from the corresponding committee members. This paper then synthesizes the expected conclusions and respective characteristics among them, and the best practices of the roadmaps, with excellent insights provided throughout by the participants.

The white paper was released during the International Communication and Cooperation Committee of ICV Roadmaps Workshop on 5 May in Brussels.

This article was originally published on CCAM. The original blog post can be found here.

The European Commission has released a new brochure featuring CCAM projects managed by CINEA and funded through the Horizon Europe programme for research and innovation in 2021 and 2022. These projects cover various domains, including data ecosystems, infrastructure support, validation methodologies, environmental aspects, and more.

FAME, along with other innovative CCAM EU-funded projects, is proud to be included in this brochure, which can be downloaded here. The brochure provides an overview of the FAME project on page 31.