Urban Air Mobility Situation Awareness From Enterprise Architecture Perspectives

Urban air mobility (UAM) operation is currently under discussion by the industry, authorities, and society, dealing with new concepts, new technologies, and complex challenges. For UAM safety, it is fundamental to strive for high levels of correct decision-making among agents and services. In safety-critical systems like UAM transportation, it is crucial to secure situation awareness (SA). Systems engineers, architects, and organizations must plan for SA acquisition and maintenance from early concept studies to ensure the relevant information is shared, allowing good decision-making. The article proposes a new approach to represent SA in the UAM ecosystem using enterprise architecture (EA) modeling through the unified architecture framework (UAF). To understand the interactions and behaviors committed to SA, decision-making, and safe performance, SA is explored using a process driven by a comprehensive picture of an entire enterprise from the perspectives of designers, providers, and operators. The UAF modeling language and domain metamodel were used as the EA modeling methodology. The model proposed in this article presents a novel and comprehensive representation of SA in the UAM ecosystem. The different views from the model are explored to discuss how the SA can improve the safe accomplishment of UAM missions. The results include views combining people, data, operators, and operational processes showing how an enterprise support SA as a competence.