Innovative Air Mobility: Listening Before Lifting Off

Margarida Santos, a research assistant at ISCTE – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, is helping the ImAFUSA Project build a framework that goes beyond the technical. Her work focuses on mapping how Innovative Air Mobility (IAM) services could affect people in their daily lives, from accessibility to community well-being.

Meanwhile, her ISCTE colleagues Margarida Lopes and Helena Almeida are exploring how the public actually feels about these technologies. By combining data collection, participatory dialogue, and virtual reality simulations, the team at ISCTE is developing valuable insights into how drones and air taxis might fit into the urban environment.

In her interview, Margarida Santos explains that ISCTE's contribution to ImAFUSA focuses on

“building the impact assessment framework.”

She notes the importance of evaluating IAM beyond just technical or financial metrics.

“We want to measure how Innovative Air Mobility can affect the well-being of people,”

Her work connects with other aspects of the project, helping define indicators that cities can use to plan for new IAM services. She adds,

“Our purpose is to create an Innovative Air Mobility framework based on specific indicators that can help define the benefits and costs of these services.”

Santos emphasises that the team is not working in isolation.

“We are developing our framework in close collaboration with other partners of the project and we want to assure that our work can contribute to the broader goal of the project: helping cities make informed and socially accepted decisions.”

In a separate interview, researchers Margarida Lopes and Helena Almeida describe how their team is working on understanding public perception, especially through immersive technology.

Lopes highlights the importance of engaging people early. She explains:

“We want to know what people value, what are their expectations and concerns,

To do this, ISCTE uses virtual reality to simulate different drone scenarios and gather feedback.

“We are testing how people perceive drones flying over their heads in different conditions.”

Helena Almeida adds,

“Our job is to analyse the public perceptions and see how they react to different scenarios.”

Their approach combines virtual reality experiments, surveys, and workshops to collect meaningful data from diverse participants.

Together, the ISCTE team aims to ensure that Innovative Air Mobility develops with real-world impact in mind-one grounded in how people live, think, and feel. Their work reinforces a key ImAFUSA value: technological innovation must be guided by social acceptance.

Want to dive deeper into ISCTE’s research on Virtual Reality and Innovative Air Mobility? Read our latest blog post: “Testing Tomorrow’s Skies Today: Exploring the Future of Air Mobility Through Virtual Reality” and discover how immersive technology is helping shape smarter, more inclusive cities.

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Connect with Margarida Santos, Margarida Lopes and Helena Almeida of ISCTE - Instituto Universitário de Lisboa to follow their research on how citizen-centred insights are shaping the future of Innovative Air Mobility.