Vertiport location selection criteria for urban air mobility

Abstract

Urban traffic congestion remains a critical issue for humanity in the industrial age of intense urbanization. The introduction of electric vertical take-off and landing (e-VTOL) aircraft in the early 2000s sparked innovation in transportation and logistics, offering a novel approach to addressing urbanization-related congestion. Research focused on Urban Air Mobility (UAM) has led to R&D activities for e-VTOL aircraft while vertiports are being developed. Although the space constraint for the establishment of vertiports in megacities is frequently mentioned in the literature, the number of studies on where vertiports should be established and the criteria to be considered when determining this are limited. The present study identifies criteria for evaluating the selection of vertiport locations within metropolitan areas through a literature review, utilizing the BWM method from Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) techniques for analysis. The findings indicate that Airspace Management ranks highest in importance among the criteria, while meteorological conditions are identified as the least critical.