If you can't measure U-space, you can't improve it!

The PODIUM project has assessed U-space services maturity in five European sites. An agile approach was put in place to identify demonstration objectives, specify common indicators and metrics and develop a validation toolkit, containing questionnaires, briefing/debriefing and observation guides common to all sites. 18 operational scenarios (73 actual flights, 138 flight authorizations) were run over 3 countries (Denmark, France and Netherlands). All actors strongly confirm the need for UTM/U-space solutions that can facilitate flight authorizations requests, and improve safety and efficiency during flight execution. Whereas U-space services for the pre-flight phase are practically ready for deployment, significant action is needed to ensure that U-space can really take off in the flight execution phase.