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ImAFUSA Shares Insights and Tools on Social Acceptance of IAM at Airspace World 2025
- ImAFUSA
- Jul 7
- 3 min read
ImAFUSA was delighted to participate in Airspace World 2025 in Lisbon, sharing our latest work on the development of socially acceptable Innovative Air Mobility (IAM) services.
As one of the SESAR 3 Joint Undertaking’s solutions demonstrated at the major global event organised by CANSO, ImAFUSA was able to connect with an international audience of aviation stakeholders, policymakers, researchers, and industry innovators.
SESAR JU Airspace World Walking Tour
The project was featured during one of several Walking Tours hosted by SESAR JU during the event, specifically Tour 13 under the theme “Paving the way for integrated drone operations in Europe.”
The tour began with an introduction by Michael Sfyroeras, a Programme Manager with SESAR JU. Project Coordinator Sophia Kalakou (BRU-ISCTE) and Anna Palaiologk (Future Needs) then presented to participants the IAM impact assessment framework and toolset for improved trade-off between societal acceptance and airspace capacity levels of IAM, a framework that aims to support relevant policy, regulation and decision-making.
ImAFUSA´s tools quantify and show the environmental, socio-economic and safety (as perceived by citizens) impacts of IAM and provides key insights to decision-makers on acceptable impact thresholds. Amid the exciting technological developments in the field of IAM, this is an area where there is a gap in the current available research, one that ImAFUSA is helping to fill.
Examples were showcased at the event to demonstrate how end-users can deploy the ImAFUSA platform and get insights for the design of socially acceptable IAM services. During the tour, Richard Frizon, Chief of Resources at SESAR JU had an engaging discussion with the team, delving into topics such as the use of objective vs. subjective approaches in the social acceptance surveys.
Europe for Aviation Stand
In addition to the Walking Tour, ImAFUSA had an active presence at the Europe for Aviation stand, sharing more about the project with conference delegates.
In particular, our virtual reality tool was available to provide visitors with an immersive experience of drone services in urban and rural environments. This innovative tool developed by the team at ISCTE allows realistic simulations of IAM to explore the acceptability of drone services with varying U-space technical characteristics.
This work was further the focus of a presentation by ImAFUSA and ISCTE researcher Helena Almeida during a dedicated session.
We value the many interesting comments we received on the future of IAM and the challenge of including subjective information of citizens into technical documentation that sets the acceptable thresholds of IAM. This interest underlines the importance of our holistic and integrated approach in IAM research for SESAR JU.
ImAFUSA´s vision is a sustainable future for aviation where operations efficiency and citizens' wellbeing are matched. Our intensive work in this area continues with the next upcoming milestone being the delivery of innovative tools for IAM impact and capacity assessment, soon to be available on the project’s website.
You can find more information about the SESAR JU Walking Tours at Airspace World 2025 here.
To stay up-to-date with the delivery of these tools and other project updates, make sure to follow ImAFUSA on LinkedIn and Bluesky and subscribe to our LinkedIn Newsletter to receive regular round-ups of our most important news!
