J.A Calvo-Fresno¹, J. Morcillo-Bellido² and B. Rodrigo-Moya³

¹ SESAR Joint Undertaking, Brussels 1160, Belgium

² Universidad Carlos III. Av. de la Universidad, 30, 28911 Madrid, Spain

³ UNED. Paseo Senda del Rey, 11, 28040 Madrid, Spain

jacfpropio@gmail.com, morcillo@ing.uc3m.es, brodrigo@cee.uned.es

Keywords: Air navigation system; air traffic control; multiannual financial framework; aviation research.

1. Introduction

The concept of “Industry 4.0”, its relevant characteristics, its enabling key technologies and its triggers have been widely described [1,2,3,4]. Although this concept is generally associated to the manufacturing industry, and the air navigation sector focuses rather on the provision of services to air operations, it is possible to establish a correspondence between the characteristics of Industry 4.0 and the high-level objectives that describe the operational performance of the air navigation system, using the areas of intervention of the EU financial tool “Horizon Europe” as a bridge.  Once established this correspondence, it is possible to compare the EU financial contribution to the high-level objectives in the period 1995-2020 and the expected use of EU funds in Horizon Europe in this sector.

2. Industry 4.0, Horizon Europe and airspace operations objectives

Horizon Europe comprises three clusters (“Civil Security for Society”, “Digital, Industry and Space”, and “Climate, Energy and Mobility”) with areas of intervention which are relevant to the future research in airspace operations management. Based on these areas of intervention, the description of the characteristics of Industry 4.0, and the definition of the high-level objectives for the operational performance of the air navigation system, it is possible to infer which of the Industry 4.0 characteristics would correspond to each of the areas of intervention; and to what high-level operational performance objectives does each area of intervention contribute significantly.

3. Methodology and Objective

In order to compare the distribution of the use of EU funds in airspace operations research with the expected distribution provided for in Horizon Europe, this study makes use of the financial information from the 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th Framework Programmes, SESAR 1 and SESAR 2020 for the period 1995-2020. The distribution of use of funds expected under Horizon Europe is obtained by doing an apportionment of the budget proposed for each of the already mentioned clusters [5] (European Parliament and Council, 2021) across the performance objectives, assuming an equal relative weight of each objective in each of the areas of intervention for which a relation with them has been identified.

4. Results and conclusions

Up to now, research projects have aimed predominantly at supporting safety and capacity objectives. Although this trend continues with the expected EU contribution in Horizon Europe, there is a 20% reduction in their ratios, for the benefit of the objectives of cost efficiency, environmental impact, and security. For this last one, the expected ratio raises to more than double of its current real value. These results are consistent with the expectation that Industry 4.0 would enhance environmental and economic sustainability, and it is above all consistent with the foreseen increase in the use of software tools, and digitalized ecosystems, which brings up the need to protect critical systems and system data from cyber security threats [6].

References

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