The introduction of more advanced automation in air traffic control seems inevitable. Air traffic controllers will then take the role of automation supervisors, a role which is generally unsuitable for humans. Gamification, the use of game elements in non-gaming contexts, shows promising results in mitigating the effects of boredom in highly automated domains requiring human supervision. An example is luggage screening, where dangerous items are rarely found, through projecting fictional threats on top of x-ray scans. This paper presents and experimentally tests a proposed implementation of gamification within highly automated en-route air traffic control. Fictional flights were superimposed among automatically controlled real traffic, thus creating fictional conflicts that needed resolving. System supervisors were tasked to supervise the behaviour of a fully automated conflict detection and resolution system, while manually routing fictional flights safely and efficiently through the sector, avoiding conflicts with both real and fictional flights. Automation anomalies were simulated, as well as an automation failure event, after which the system supervisor needed to assume manual control over all traffic. The presence of fictional flights increased self-reported concentration levels and reduced boredom. However, some participants reported that fictional flights were distracting. Thus, while the use of fictional flights increases engagement, it might negatively affect other cognitive functions, and with that, compromise safety. Thus, while the implementation of such a tool might provide benefits in terms of skill retention and engagement, further research is recommended involving professional air traffic controllers, improved measurement tools and a longitudinal study that better excites boredom, complacency, and skill erosion in order to understand and mitigate its negative effects.

Very-low-level (VLL) urban air operations have been extensively investigated as a solution for mitigating congestion in cities. However, the manner in which the management of such traffic should be performed is still actively investigated. One important component of such a system is the conflict detection and resolution (CD&R), mainly composed of the strategic and tactical CD&R module. While many approaches towards these have been studied, insufficient analysis has been conducted on their compatibility when functioning within a unified, hybrid system. Additionally, their robustness to operational uncertainties such as wind and departure delays is often overlooked. In this work, we investigate the performance of strategic planing methods when combined with tactical CD&R and subjected to a wide range of traffic demand levels and uncertainty conditions. Simulations indicate that the performance of the strategic deconfliction module is highly sensitive to the presence of wind and delay. This decline in performance is partially mitigated by the tactical deconfliction module. Thus, the results suggest that increased use of tactical CD&R could lessen the required level of detail of strategic deconfliction methods, leading to improved compatibility between the two modules.

U-space/UTM operations are considered an integral part of the future development of cities, with applications ranging from package delivery to urban air mobility. However, this new complex environment also poses challenges for the conflict detection and resolution (CD&R) process, especially if aircraft will have to navigate above the existing street network due to privacy and obstacle constraints. The research at hand aims to investigate how information about the environment and other aircraft can be used to improve the performance of CD&R methods in constrained urban airspace. For this, three algorithms are developed and tested, each with different levels of information availability: the first solely uses current state information for conflict solving, the second includes additional information about the urban environment within the CD&R process, and the last also incorporates trajectory intent data to solve conflicts. These methods are tested within simulations of urban air traffic scenarios at various demand and wind levels to determine their safety and efficiency performance. Results show the use of street geometry information benefits the resolution process greatly, increasing the safety level while minimally affecting efficiency. Intent information is shown to not be critical for achieving this.

Urban air mobility can be a potential solution for urban congestion, and high-level concepts of operations (e.g., UTM, U-space) have been developed with the help of large-scale simulations of multi-agent systems. However, one aspect that should be researched more is the effect of wind on the safety and efficiency of missions in an urban environment. While studies that analyse the potential effect of wind on U-space operations exist, they mostly use constant wind fields, or highly simplified wind models. The study at hand investigates whether medium-fidelity CFD models can be used to predict and match recorded wind data in the city centre of The Hague. Six locations with distinct urban features were chosen, and wind measurements were recorded on two separate days. Using the rooftop wind properties obtained during the measurement sessions, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations were performed within a large urban model of the city. Results indicate that there are large discrepancies between the simulated and measured values. Some wind phenomena observed within the measured wind data were also replicated by the CFD model. Thus, based on the results presented in this work, future research should focus on improving computer city models and wind measurement methods to ensure the development of concepts of operations that maximise the safety and efficiency of future U-space operations.

Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM) is an active research subject as its proposed applications are increasing. UTM aims to enable a variety of UAS operations, including package delivery, infrastructure inspection, and emergency missions. That creates the need for extensive research on how to incorporate such traffic, as conventional methods and operations used in Air Traffic Management (ATM) are not suitable for constrained urban airspace. This paper proposes and compares several traffic capacity balancing methods developed for a UTM system designed to be used in highly dense, very low-level urban airspace. Three types of location-based dynamic traffic capacity management techniques are tested: street-based, grid-based, and cluster-based. The proposed systems are tested by simulating traffic within mixed (constrained and open) urban airspace based on the city of Vienna at five different traffic densities. Results show that using local, area-based clustering for capacity balancing within a UTM system improves safety, efficiency, and capacity metrics, especially when simulated or historical traffic data are used.