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Aviation Twin Transition Cluster

a European initiative for a sustainable future

The REFMAP and ImAFUSA projects have joined forces to drive climate neutrality and digital transformation in aviation, forming the Aviation Twin Transition Cluster.

“If you are part of an EU-funded project focused on new digital aviation technologies, business models, or services for aircraft, we invite you to collaborate with us!”

We are seeking collaboration in various areas, including joint promotional and dissemination efforts, sharing expertise and technical innovations, and co-organising workshops and events.

We aim to leverage synergies with other EU initiatives to create European digital platforms that provide insights and analytics for citizens, businesses, and policymakers.

Funded by the European Commission, members of the Aviation Twin Transition Cluster are working to develop and demonstrate new technologies that further digitalise and automate the European aviation sector. Our vision is to make aviation greener, more circular, and globally competitive.

Our goals are:

To enable new European business models and products with minimal environmental impact and opportunities for European competitiveness.
To transform digital aviation and space technologies as well as Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS).
To enable new services with pronounced societal impact for intermodal and multimodal transport, search and rescue operations, fast response to natural disasters, freight, firefighting, high altitude earth data-services, agriculture and forestry.
To leverage new aviation products and services that exploit Artificial Intelligence and have pronounced impact to productivity, efficiency, automation and cost reduction.
To minimise the risks risks posed by emerging threats to aviation such as cybersecurity, COVID-19, extreme weather conditions (e.g. temperature change, wind patterns).
To leverage technologies that address applications in difficult to access areas, including the open sea emergency response, avalanches, landslides and floods are within the scope of the topic.
To exploit synergies with aviation, space and defence.

The Cluster will operate via Working Groups in which researchers, policy makers and practitioners from the industry can participate thus fostering interdisciplinary discussion to investigate any topic of their choice. The Aviation Twin Transition Cluster offers an inclusive, pan-European environment for individuals of all levels of seniority to grow their professional research networks and boost their careers, while creating networking opportunities and a platform to discuss ideas and complex problems in a targeted way, across a large geographical area.

TRAINING

EVENTS

RESOURCES

COMPETENCES

The Aviation Twin Transition Cluster will:

act as a hub for information exchange and training
promotes networking among its members and strengthen idea exchange by developing best practices
engage in communication campaign aiming at raising awareness on research outcomes that can make aviation greener and more digital
serve as a conduit to requisite expertise or relevant projects, whether at the national, European, or international level.

Our projects

RefMAP seeks to minimize the environmental impact of air travel for both airlines and Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) by developing a digital service that optimizes flight trajectories on micro and macro levels.

Join this initiative for a sustainable future

COLOSSUS will develop a system-of-systems design methodology which for the first time will enable the combined optimization of aircraft, operations and business models. Resulting specific solutions for intermodal transport and wildfire-fighting as well as developed methods and tools will be openly published in order to foster exploitation for research and industry.

AIRSHIP is a Horizon Europe funded project (GA 101096487) that envisions an innovative use of a known transportation mean: flying ships. Such vehicles (also known as ekranoplans or wing-in-ground -WIG vehicles) inherit all the advantages of conventional airborne transportation, while being more energy efficient and environmentally friendly, both from the carbon footprint and the acoustic noise pollution point of view. AIRSHIP aims to lay the foundations of a new class of fully electrical unmanned aircraft system, the UWV (Unmanned WIG Vehicle) that brings together speed, flexibility and energy efficiency.

Contrails and aviation-induced cloudiness effects on climate change show large uncertainties since they are subject to meteorological, regional, and seasonal variations. Indeed, under some specific circumstances, aircraft can generate anthropogenic cirrus with cooling. Thus, the need for research into contrails and aviation-induced cloudiness and its associated uncertainties to be considered in aviation climate mitigation actions becomes unquestionable. We will blend cutting-edge AI techniques (deep learning) and climate science with application to the aviation domain, aiming at closing (at least partially) the existing gap in terms of understanding aviation-induced climate impact. The overall purpose of the E-CONTRAIL project is to develop artificial neural networks (leveraging remote sensing detection methods) for the prediction of the climate impact derived from contrails and aviation-induced cloudiness, contributing, thus, to a better understanding of the non-CO2 impact of aviation on global warming and reducing their associated uncertainties as essential steps towards green aviation.

Di-PEGASUS aims to develop several enabling technologies targeting both the air and the ground side, in order to enable fully autonomous, cost-effective and environmentally friendly operations for seaplanes, VTOL and drones. Integrating AI and automation in the transport sector is essential to optimize routes, reduce emissions, and enhance fleet management. To facilitate this integration, the Di-PEGASUS platform is proposed as a comprehensive tool to assess the viability of business models, considering key performance indicators and regulatory compliance. This platform is seen as a critical component in the development and exploitation of innovative technologies, providing a framework to evaluate societal and economic impacts and assisting stakeholders in making informed decisions throughout the entire development process.

The OPEN SKIES CORNWALL Project will create four thematic demonstration environments in Cornwall for real-world end users, technical specialists, uncrewed aircraft system (UAS) operators, regulators, innovators, and academics, to:

Test new detect and avoid (DAA) systems and concepts in real world Cornish environments to develop uncrewed aircraft systems traffic management (UTM) and generate new market opportunities for UAS use locally, nationally, and internationally.
Link end user drone delivery requirements to end user supply chain challenges and opportunities, contributing to market validation and future integration and commercialisation.
Explore and test solutions, procedures, and concepts to meet regulatory requirements relating to airspace and land access and medical products transit compliance. Progress industrial research to integrate enabling technologies and support infrastructure for real world end users within our thematic environments.