Project results are expected to contribute to the following expected outcomes.

• Cost-efficiency: the proposed solutions are expected to report on the potential reduction in infrastructure costs. There are potential advantages deriving from the sharing of space-based services for aviation applications. Potential reduction in infrastructure and the possible creation of competition between future data suppliers will reduce costs;
• Capacity: the proposed solutions shall aim at improving capacity and resilience thanks to an increased flexibility of ATS provision to better adapt to traffic demand and make best use of capacity at network level;
• Safety: the proposed solutions are expected to maintain at least the same level of safety as the current ATM system;
• Security: The proposed solutions are expected to identify and mitigate the potential security risks deriving from the future data sharing service delivery model.

The Digital European Sky vision aims at removing the close coupling of ATM service provision to the ATS systems and operational procedures. The challenge is to propose innovative (or unconventional) ideas that will enable data-sharing, foster a more dynamic and resilient airspace management and ATM service provision, allowing air traffic service units (ATSU) to improve capacity in portions of airspace where traffic demand exceeds the available capacity. A more flexible use of external data services, considering data properties and access rights, would allow the infrastructure to be rationalised, reducing the related costs. The proposed solutions shall aim at rationalising and harmonising the ATM infrastructure while reducing the defragmentation. Virtualization solutions shall aim at completely decoupling ATM service provision from the physical location of the personnel and equipment, while scaling up and down of system performance in quasi-real time, as and when required.

The SESAR 3 JU has identified the following innovative research elements that could be used to meet the challenge described above and achieve the expected outcomes. The list is not intended to be prescriptive; proposals for work on areas other than those listed below are welcome, provided they include adequate background and justification to ensure clear traceability with the R&I needs set out in the SRIA for the virtualisation and cyber secure data-sharing flagship:

• Quantum computing in ATM. Research aims at exploring how quantum computing could be applied in ATM and how it could impact ATM. The definition of potential measures to mitigate such impact (e.g., the impact of quantum computing on future security needs in ATM, etc.) is also under scope. Research may address other areas of interest such as NP-Hard problems coming from ATM (large-scale trajectory planning, airspace configuration optimization, etc.) (R&I need: future data-sharing service delivery model).
• Distributed/federated simulation in ATM. This research element focuses on the use of distributed/federated simulations in ATM as a means of boosting participant numbers by being location and time-zone independent and allowing for a more flexible and iterative design process, especially for design evaluation in the lower maturity phases of system development. The concept of simulation as a service (SaaS) as a method to deploy simulation resources (e.g., simulators, models, input data) in the cloud using web services (WSs) for users to access these resources is also under scope. As this area is in the very early stages of development, research should determine how its potential could be explored, so that, for example, the problem of a shortage of participants can be circumvented, while contributing to the availability of a wider range of experts globally. With possible reductions in demand for mobility and in flexibility in both time and space due to post-pandemic effects, this solution could provide both methodological and organisational benefits to the ATM and research communities. Research may take into consideration the experience on the use of this type of simulation in the defence domain. Aspects such as cultural/local ATM operational differences should also be studied, and more complex network effects analysed by enabling cloud-based remote human-in-the-loop multisite simulations, in a direction which may have additional synergies with that of ATM virtualisation. Technical and operational challenges related to cloud-based distributed simulations, especially in the case of human-in-the-loop experimentation, should be addressed in relation to the need to temporally synchronise the entire experiment and associated events and interventions, align all actors’ views, etc. Research may address different architectures e.g., distributed interactive simulation (DIS), high-level architecture simulation (HLA), etc. This challenge becomes even more difficult when trying to integrate legacy systems, which is another aspect that the research is expected to investigate from operational and technical points of view (R&I need: scalability and resilience).
• ATM data management. The decentralization of the ATM system will bring with it the distribution of data management responsibilities among multiple actors. There is a need to establish requirements that ensure that data are correctly stored and that the transmission of data is carried out in a secure and traceable way, also protecting privacy requirements. Proposals should describe a specific ATM data management challenge, selecting one or more ways to store (e.g., data spaces), buy (e.g., data markets) and transmit ATM data so that the security and traceability is improved and propose a plan to validate the relevant hypothesis. Research may consider generic data encryption solutions that are in use in other industries that may be useful for ATM (R&I need: cyber-resilience).
• Cyber threat intelligence services in aviation. The use of techniques based on machine learning (ML) to support cyber threat detection and mitigation is quite widespread in the state of the art of various industries (e.g., internet services, e-commerce, content delivery networks, etc.). The observation of anomalous traffic patterns or transactions enables the detection of cyberattacks. The transfer of these methods to aviation domain is not straightforward and, given the current tendency in aviation to enhance information-sharing to implement machine-to-machine automated functions (e.g., through SWIM implementation, increased bandwidth air–ground communications, etc.) while maintaining legacy systems built without any proper security policy, research in this area is needed. Research may address dynamic risk assessment (DRA) and business impact assessment (BIA) techniques and improve information sharing and federated learning architectures aimed at anomaly detection. EASA regulation on information security needs to be taken as a baseline. The proposal shall demonstrate a thorough knowledge of past SESAR (or non-SESAR) activities on this field (R&I need: cyber-resilience).
• ATM digital transformation. Research aims at advancing towards the digital transformation in ATM facilitating data exchange and decision-making thanks to innovative, unconventional and breakthrough solutions at all stages of the lifecycle, from research using open science frameworks, through to tactical and operational optimisation. Shared-information platforms and new IT tools and services will support optimised and interconnected services, providing real-time information to professionals and the travelling public and enhancing system resilience in the event of disruption and crisis. Improving resilience capabilities is key for increased safely level, the traffic control capacity should be preserved even in case of major failures especially in a contingency situation in order to maintain a business continuity of the infrastructures, being the system capable of seamless service provision through virtualization and delegation to other infrastructure elements providing reliable support to emergency management. Research also addresses the impact that the co-existence between diverse technologies within the ATM network may have. AI-based tools will enable optimised mobility offerings and travel options, especially in cases of disruption, allowing the system to remain operational at acceptably high-performance levels. The goal is to ensure that aviation reaps the benefits delivered by, for example, artificial intelligence (AI) and big data. While focused on the ATM dimension, proposals shall consider potential constraints imposed by other domains as well as collateral impacts of ATM research on other domains. Research scope includes the development of an exportable AI transversal platform that could be used in different ATC systems, supported by e.g., data platform capabilities, security and data ontology/governance aspects, graph neural networks (GNN), etc. (R&I need: free flow of data among trusted users across borders).
• Enhanced techniques to empower NM operations. This element covers improving data structure and data storage to empower big data exploitation and analytics in network manager (NM) operations. Research aims also at investigating how business intelligence strategies and technologies can be applied to improve the efficiency, stability and resilience of the network through data analysis of business information (R&I need: free flow of data among trusted users across borders).
• Innovation in route-charging schemes. This research element addresses how the route charging and cost-recovery mechanisms should evolve in order to move towards a service oriented provision scheme and how to better connect technological innovation with the SES performance scheme. Previous exploratory research projects in SESAR (e.g. COCTA) have shown the potential of new trajectory pricing schemes to support a more flexible distribution of the demand. Proposals addressing this area may build on this previous research or propose other innovative charging schemes (e.g., modulation of charges). Potential ideas include lower charges in periods of low demand, discounts for early flight planning with route commitment (in order to promote the SESAR shared business trajectory (SBT) concept and enable better ANSP resource planning), overcharge for changes after filing flight plan, etc. Research shall address the definition of potential innovative incentive mechanisms. Research may also look into charging schemes that consider environmental penalties or rebates, e.g. higher charges for flights filing flight-plans with longer routes than necessary, rebates for flights accepting an NM-proposed re-route or flying at a flight-level different from what they requested. The research element addresses the integration of SES performance and charging schemes and SESAR performance framework (R&I need: Regulations and standards).