CFPs: Airborne Capabilities for Supporting Reducing ATM Environmental Footprint

Scope

• The following list of R&I needs is proposed as an illustration of the potential project content, but it is not meant as prescriptive. Proposals may include other research elements beyond the proposed research elements below if they are justified by their contribution to achieve the expected outcomes of the topic and are fully aligned with the development priorities defined in the European ATM Master Plan.
  • Environmentally driven trajectory planning
    • Research aims at developing technologies and operational concepts to allow the planning of more optimised trajectories by considering both CO2/non-CO2 effects in the aircraft trajectory planning. Research shall assess the need and if required develop sufficiently accurate models (e.g., aircraft performance, climate impact, etc.) to support efficient trajectory optimisation. Research shall integrate different inputs (e.g., CO2 emission profiles, eco-sensitive regions (i.e., regions where non-CO2 effects (e.g., contrails, NOx, etc.) are significantly important), aircraft dynamical models, and define potential optimisation algorithms for trajectory planning. Airline trajectory optimisation plays an important role on the global environmental mitigations. However, and since adopting independently optimised trajectories may not be always operationally feasible, the proposed algorithms shall consider air traffic management aspects such as safety, traffic demand, complexity, etc. Environmentally driven trajectory optimisation shall include enroute and terminal areas. The optimisation in the terminal areas shall consider both noise, non-CO2 and CO2 including potential trade-offs. The research element should address the update of computerised flight plan service products, FMS updates and/or the development/update of EFB applications. The development of improved aircraft (e.g. for new aircraft, or more accurate models of existing aircraft) or climate models is also in scope. Note the integration of FOC, EFB and FMS is covered in WA 1-1.
  • Wake energy retrieval (WER)
    • WER operations allow aircraft to reduce fuel-burn by flying closely behind another aircraft, thus taking advantage of some of the residual lift of the leader. From an ATM point of view, the challenge is to identify WER candidate pairs, manage the rendezvous and then the pair when formed. In low-density airspace, continental airspace and/or oceanic/remote airspace, previous R&I has laid the operational foundations supporting WER entry into service for limited number of pairs. Research shall address the development and validation of a concept of operations for scaling up the WER concept to higher pair frequencies and the remaining en-route operational environments, considering the outcomes and results of previous projects on the topic. The research must cover both the ground and airborne technical developments and procedures, with a particular focus on support tool integration in common FDP systems as well as suitable automation steps to enhance ATCO efficiency when handling multiple WER operations or requests. The whole process must be addressed, starting with the flight planning phase (with inclusion of WER equipage information in the flight plan), the identification of candidate pairs, the actual ATC clearances required to put the two aircraft in a situation where the pairing manoeuvre can start, the ATC clearance for the pairing manoeuvre, the control of the flights by ATC during the WER operation and the ATC clearance to unpair. Tools for monitoring network WER operations for performance assessment purposes are also in scope.
    • Research shall address air to air (A/A) communication to enable new operationssuch as WER, defining the operation needs and requirements that should drive the developing of the associated technical capabilities.
    •  In addition to contributing to the operational validation of such aircraft and ground capabilities, the research must pave the way to the standardisation and certification of the new airborne and ground systems, as well as support the adoption of WER at a global level through ICAO.
  • Environmentally friendly TMA operations through combined dynamic management of aircraft configuration and navigation and route structure
    • The research aims at enhancing flight management system on the one hand, which advises the pilots to perform the flight more optimally. It includes the required aircraft configuration with allowing a flight along the lateral path of the permanent resume trajectory (PRT) and the newly calculated optimal vertical profile from the FMS by the autopilot or (semi-)manual flight with commanded selections by the pilots. In both ways, modern aircraft flight control architectures can cope with the foreseen FMS enhancements for arrivals and departures as these have strong influence on the noise Impact. Furthermore, new communication ways will ensure the required data exchange to provide the enhanced functionalities. On the other hand, new airspace management techniques and related support tools open the path for more optimal routing of aircraft in the terminal manoeuvring area (TMA) enhancing the airspace capacity with more environmentally friendly operations at the same time while further maintaining and ensuring today’s safety level. The proposed solutions shall address not only arrivals but also departures as these have strong influence on the network capabilities. This research includes the development of avionics and procedures to improve vertical navigation in all phases of flight, including energy management in the descent, implementation of strategic or tactical vertical constraints and monitoring of their compliance, etc. Note that there is on-going work on this research element by projects DYNMARS (working also on procedural aspects in relation with route structures dynamicity) and GALAAD.
  • Voluntary mitigation of climate impact for individual flights in low-density/low complexity traffic situations at AU initiative
    • This research element covers the update of state-of-the-art FOC and/or EFB applications to implement a multi-objective flight planning via the integration of via the integration of climate impact models (e.g., algorithmic climate change functions) with the goal to consider the overall climate impact (CO2 and non-CO2 effects) of a flight while ensuring the compliance with conventional flight planning boundary conditions and operational constraints. The proposed solutions shall consider the impact on the uncertainty in weather forecast (e.g., persistent warming contrails forecasts based on any observation technologies available). From a conceptual point of view, the enabler solution developed could be implemented in different phases of the flight planning process, comprising strategic and tactical flight planning and even a revision of the flight plan during the execution phase.
  • Environmentally optimised operations with geometric altitude
    • Since the early days of aviation, barometric pressure measurements have been a simple and robust method for altimetry. Two drawbacks exist though: there is no direct reference to terrain, and the constant variations in pressure caused by the weather leads to increased vertical profile variability restricting capacity and flight efficiency in today’s high traffic density.
    •  Research shall investigate the potential of extending the use of geometric altimetry enabled by satellite navigation to increase safety and deliver environmental benefits.

Funding Information

• Budget (EUR) – Year 2025: 30 000 000
• Contributions: 3000000 to 6000000
• The maximum project duration is 36 months.

Expected Outcomes

• To significantly advance the following development actions:
  • IR-5-04 Airborne capabilities for supporting reducing ATM environmental footprint. This includes wake energy retrieval (WER), energy-based operations, and environment driven trajectory optimisation, etc.
  • IR-3-08 Geometric altimetry.

Eligibility Criteria

• Entities eligible to participate:
  • Entities eligible to participate Any legal entity, regardless of its place of establishment, including legal entities from nonassociated third countries or international organisations (including international European research organisations) is eligible to participate (whether it is eligible for funding or not), provided that the conditions laid down in the Horizon Europe Regulation have been met, along with any other conditions laid down in the specific call/topic.
  • A ‘legal entity’ means any natural or legal person created and recognised as such under national law, EU law or international law, which has legal personality and which may, acting in its own name, exercise rights and be subject to obligations, or an entity without legal personality .
• Entities eligible for funding :
  • To become a beneficiary, legal entities must be eligible for funding. To be eligible for funding, applicants must be established in one of the following countries:
    • the Member States of the European Union, including their outermost regions:
      • Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden.
    • the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) linked to the Member States:
      • Aruba (NL), Bonaire (NL), Curação (NL), French Polynesia (FR), French Southern and Antarctic Territories (FR), Greenland (DK), New Caledonia (FR), Saba (NL), Saint Barthélemy (FR), Sint Eustatius (NL), Sint Maarten (NL), St. Pierre and Miquelon (FR), Wallis and Futuna Islands (FR).
    • countries associated to Horizon Europe;
      • Albania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Faroe Islands, Georgia, Iceland, Israel, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, New Zealand, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, Tunisia, Türkiye, Ukraine, United Kingdom.

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