Highlights from the conference Infrastructure and planning of the Lower Airspace

The conference “Infrastructure and planning of the Lower Airspace” started with the following theme: “what is happening now and in the future to the airspace”. Kim Silander, IBG’s founder opended up with the topics what do we need to implement this type of infrastructure and systems.
The conference was divided into five different blocks with interesting topics and panel discussions from experts in the Aviation and drones industry.

First theme: What is happening now and in the future to the airspace
In total these three point was central:
1) Monitoring and control, and the need for a good system for it.
2) Infrastructure, functionality and development in the drone industry.
3) Communication, security and regulations.

The second theme: The government’s role and responsibility: now and in the future
The following points was the most central from this part:
1) How the authorities should get involved in regulating low-height activities.
2) What regulations are needed to enable air traffic in and around cities and airports.
3) Co-production between different countries and institutions is necessary for further development in autonomous.

Third theme Municipalities and regions developmental needs
With these three central points:
1) Municipalities and regions has to adapt regulations according with their local infrastructure.
2) There is a need of integrating several systems from different sections to enable new infrastructure. Of which there is a Research gap. Technical aspects of drone transport is well covered by research, but there is a lack of research regarding infrastructure.
3) Sweden as economically dependent on export and foreign investment, and in which electric aircrafts and drones could become an industry.

Fourth theme Airports role in the new transport landscape
The following points was the most central from this part:
1) Avinor looking at technology and autonomous vehicles as tools to make airports more sustainable, as well as opening their spaces for external actors testing new technologies.
2) Identifying the customer needs in the work of transforming the infrastructure of airports to meet the conversion to green flight. 
3) The low frequency of airborne traffic during the Covid-19 Pandemic has limited the airports financial resources, and thus possibility of change.

The last block focused on Industry opportunities and needs
Top three highlights from these are:
1) Elfly is developing all-electric seaplanes for take-off/landing on lakes and airstrips.
2) Aviant is testing long distance medical transport between Trondheim and Røros.
3) Heart Aerospace developing electric airplanes with three main focus point: profitably, accessibility and climate.

Iver and Åsta, students at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). They’re doing an internship in Røros, were they focus on the project and test arena Green Flyway. They made live updates and collected highlights from the seminar in Östersund – Infrastructure and planning of the Lower Airspace.

The seminar was recorded for those who could not attend or want to see it again, watch the whole seminar: