This success story is about Region 10, which consists of ten municipalities in northern Sweden, of which Lycksele, Dorotea, Storuman, Arjeplog, and Skellefteå are five.
The Challenge
The regions’ cooperation model aims, among other things, to strengthen the role and development of the municipalities. The region is a vast geographical area with dispersed population, which creates significant barriers to effective service delivery and collaboration.
The Solution
The geographical spread and limited connectivity between the ten municipalities pose significant challenges for healthcare, emergency services, and business logistics. These barriers result in inefficiencies, increased costs, and reduced accessibility to essential services.
Drones and eVTOLs represent a promising solution to these issues. However, operationalising such technologies requires careful planning and simulation to ensure safety, feasibility, and cost-effectiveness. Current regulatory frameworks, such as those for U-space, need to be tested and adapted to the unique needs of sparsely populated regions.
To address these challenges, some of Region 10’s municipalities applied for funding from Aero EDIH to conduct simulations of anticipated future drone- and eVTOL traffic within and between the municipalities. The simulation was based upon expected traffic, simulated in a common workshop and thereafter being further calibrated in cooperation. The workshop simulated various scenarios, such as inter-municipal healthcare logistics, emergency service deployment, and regional cargo delivery. The workshop included preparatory work, and reports based on the workshop.
”Interesting and thought-provoking day about something that too many people know too little about”, says Eric Lundström, Head of Planning and Community Development, Lycksele Municipality.
Results
The results provided valuable insights into the technical, regulatory, and operational requirements needed to implement autonomous airborne services. Additionally, it highlighted the potential benefits, including reduced costs, improved regional accessibility, and enhanced safety.
The results of the workshop were documented to inform not only future testbed initiatives but also the municipalities’ planning offices when planning for vertiports and routes in the lower airspace. Furthermore, the insights documented in the report could contribute to Aero EDIH’s ongoing efforts to support municipalities and regions in Europe’s periphery, ensuring that lessons learned from this initiative help shape future strategies for lower airspace services.
Lessons Learned
LFV (Air Navigation Services of Sweden), is a competent provider of this service, and the workshop worked well according to the participants. The interaction with and between the municipalities and LFV was found valuable for all parties, it involved an exchange of useful information regarding the coming regulatory development, local conditions for each airport and the latest news from international Air Traffic Management authorities. LFV was able to show, with the help of some local examples, how manned and unmanned air traffic can be coordinated in the future, which gave the participants new insights. Much is gained by providing a service to a community of stakeholders, both in terms of synergies and peer-to-peer interaction.
The tight scheduling, and personnel changes at the supplier meant that a lot had to be arranged under time pressure, but close collaboration between LFV, RISE and the participating municipalities still yielded good results.
Perceived social and economic impact
The results from the workshop is an increased awareness of drone deployment in each region and a model of Use Cases both within current and future regulations. An important aspect was vertiports and discussions on possible landing sites. One common discussion is usually rooftops which are deemed difficult for drones to land and depart from, as the surface is seldom flat, with the possibility to have goods delivered on rooftops. Another result on vertiports is the security of such an area. Goods onboard the drone could be expensive or of sensitive matter wherefore more controlled areas need to be investigated for each region deploying drones as part of logistic chains.
The impact of deployment has large potential, in particular with a more autonomous system with a central control of drones performing deliveries to rural regions. One area covered was the possibility to have the delivery system as part of an open market with regions as customers, similar to daily usage of goods delivery by long-distance buses.
The workshop was conducted with focus on local participants. Similar workshops could be conducted with other regions as well. The impact of drone deployment in rural regions has huge potential, especially within the healthcare sector through delivery of medicines.
The R10 region has a large variety of businesses where drone deployment could have a positive impact on the chain of logistics. Areas discussed were as presented in Use Case healthcare sector. Other areas covered during the workshop were the forest industry, the mining industry and wind farm areas, where the importance of rapid delivery could have operational and financial benefits. There are a number of possibilities in the region, and some test activities have already been initiated in other regions.
“Impressive to realise how much mutual benefit can be created for customers and suppliers just by people coming together to share their needs, experiences and future ambitions with each other. Looking forward to the next step of the development of the lower airspace”, says Olof Strömkvist, Project Manager, RISE.
Thank you for a successful collaboration!
www.lycksele.se
www.dorotea.se
www.storuman.se
www.arjeplog.se
www.skelleftea.se
