EXTEnded AtM for Door2Door travel (X-TEAM D2D)

Door to door European connectivity in up to four hours

The X-TEAM D2D project was led by Dr. Miguel Mujica Mota, Associate Professor from the AUAS. He and his team worked with six international partners to develop a set of formal methods and multimodal system simulation models to enable door-to-door connectivity in up to four hours between any location in Europe, and to evaluate their future operation.

Developing and validating a Concept of Operations

The X-TEAM D2D project aimed to define, develop and initially validate a Concept of Operations (ConOps) for the seamless integration of ATM and Air Transport into an overall intermodal network. This network included other available transportation means such as surface and water. The proposed connectivity approach also was in compliance with the target assigned by the ACARE SRIA FlightPath 2050 goals.

The project focused on an intermodal transport network serving Urban and Extended Urban (up to Regional) mobility. It took the transportation and passenger service scenarios envisaged for the upcoming decades into account, with baseline (2025), intermediate (2035) and final (2050) time horizons. The X-TEAM D2D project:

• Provided and initially validated the target ConOps, which encompassed transportation platform integration concepts as well as innovative seamless mobility as a service, including ATM concepts.
• Preliminarily evaluated the developed ConOps against already-existing, specifically-defined and applicable KPAs and KPIs, implementing both qualitative and quantitative performance assessment approaches.
• Developed a simulation-based platform to validate the proposed concept. This platform considered the most relevant elements of future transport, including mode-mode interfaces, a high-level network model, and a passenger-centric paradigm.
• Validated the proposed ConOps with the simulation platform.
• Provided a description of the semantic values of future KPIs and a diagnosis of the ConOps’ inefficiencies.
• Developed a set of multimodal system computer models to evaluate the ConOps of the multimodal transport of the future. More specifically, the team used these models to evaluate future facilities and transport modes such as hyperloops, flying taxis, etc.

A replicable concept design

The platform’s conceptual design has been made replicable by formalizing the relationships of the key elements through techniques such as Coloured Petri Nets or UML. The different interface ‘hot areas’ identified have been formalized through Coloured Petri nets or similar formalisms. The multimodal methodology developed by the research group in recent years has also been used to simulate the systems. However, they went one step beyond as computer capabilities are limited and the methodology should be adapted/modified for large scale simulation.

Impact on decision-makers and education

This project demonstrates the potential of future technology for enhanced European door-to-door travel. More specifically, it will help decision-makers and the general public to understand the potential of technologies such as hyperloops and flying taxis. As such, it will enable decision-makers to realize potential improvements in the system. At the same time, it will contribute to the educational community by serving as a case study for combining simulation, AI and data mining techniques. The project also created deliverables for international conferences (such as the Winter Simulation Conference, Sesar Innovation Days, MULTILOG or EUROSIM) and reports to the European Commission.

Funding and partners

This project was funded by Horizon (H2020) and SESAR. It involved six international partners: Centro Italiano Ricerche Aerospaziali Scpa (Italy), Institute For Sustainable Society And Innovation (Italy), D-Flight S.P.A. (Italy), Deutsches Zentrum Für Luft - Und Raumfahrt Ev (Germany), Sieć Badawcza Łukasiewicz-Instytut Lotnictwa (Poland), Amsterdam University Of Applied Sciences (The Netherlands).

An advisory board composed mainly of experts from IGAMT also participated.