The EU UAM Projects & Initiatives Community consists of 15 projects (and counting) working together on different elements of Urban Air Mobility (UAM) to enable its integration into our daily lives. For UAM to be successfully implemented, it is important to involve the public in its development to help them understand the many opportunities this new mobility method provides, as well as the main (research) questions, the potential benefits and use cases.

Technology is advancing at a rapid pace, continuously shifting opinions in society. During project meetings and conferences, key stakeholders expressed their need for societal engagement and acceptance before implementing UAM solutions on a large scale. But how do we accomplish this?

- Flying Forward 2020 (FF2020) involves citizens by conducting public acceptance surveys after its demonstrations to understand how they experienced autonomous drone operations in their environment and their viewpoint on the development of Urban Air Mobility.

- AiRMOUR recently published an interesting report about a large-scale public and stakeholder acceptance study. Over 1000 responses were gathered from six EU countries. The second round of engagement in additional cities is coming up, as well as focus group sessions with citizens and medical sector stakeholders during demonstration events: http://ow.ly/yyZB50L8W6p

- AURORA organised a “UAM for all” workshop for the general public to discuss the potential benefits, risks and complexities of this emerging industry. You can read the workshop report here: http://ow.ly/xr7850L8W6a

- TindAIR conducted a survey and a series of interviews, the results of the social acceptance assessment should be revealed soon on their website.

- USEPE organised a workshop to collect stakeholder needs and expectations towards the solution they develop to ensure a safe separation of drones operating over cities.

Most importantly, our projects will use the information gathered from citizens and stakeholders to improve our project results and processes.

This community welcomes new ideas and new partners to collaborate on public engagement and acceptance of Urban Air Mobility. To become part of this movement and become involved with future FF2020 public acceptance activities, please contact Lisa van der Heijden at lisa@digie.expert.

For more information about some of the projects in this community and their public acceptance activities, please visit:
AiRMOUR: https://airmour.eu/
AURORA: https://aurora-uam.eu/
TindAIR: https://tindair.eu/
USEPE: https://usepe.eu/