Mie Prefectural Government will become the first local government outside of Europe to collaborate within a 46-member consortium of cities and regions working towards a future for flying vehicles. The Urban Air Mobility Initiative Cities Community (UIC2) is part of the European Union’s Smart Cities Marketplace, aimed at furthering the planning and implementation of urban air mobility (UAM e.g. drones and flying vehicles) in Europe. Mie therefore will join the collaboration as its first International City Region Partner in the hope of acting as a testbed for the technologies in gaining social acceptance for the urban air transport revolution.
Mie Prefecture is aiming to solve various regional issues such as transportation, tourism, disaster prevention, lifestyle, and to maintain and improve the quality of life and create a new business environment, utilising the new technology in flying vehicles. This will take the form of considering effective measures in Mie Prefecture by exchanging information on various issues faced by the current 46 cities and regions that are members of UIC2 and their efforts to solve them. It is anticipated that by increasing the recognition of Mie Prefecture in the EU region, efforts toward the air transportation revolution, such as demonstration experiments and practical application in the prefecture, will be accelerated.
In particular, the partnership will consist of the following activities:
- exchanging information on topics related to the activities of UIC2 members (cities and regions) regarding regulations, technology, co-creation/social acceptability etc. as part of being an International City Region Partner of UIC2.
- supporting the basic concept of the UIC2 Manifesto on the Multilevel Governance of the Urban Sky, necessary to build a system from the perspective of residents centered on cities/regions and work toward its realisation in the EU and Japan through necessary cooperation such as exchanging opinions and best practices.
As drones and flying vehicles are expected to fly at relatively low altitudes, based on the philosophy that it is necessary to build a system not only from the technical perspective, but also from the perspective of residents in cities and regions, UIC2 members develop mobility and policy demonstrators to discuss the role and authority of cities and regions in the emerging UAM ecosystem, and make informed bottom-up knowledge-sharing and recommendations to the EU institutional stakeholders such as the aviation authorities (EASA: European Union Aviation Safety Agency) and the EU’s sustainable mobility policy-making bodies.
Enabling efficient and effective mobility in urban areas is a key challenge in Europe and Asia, with the EU estimating that traffic congestion currently costs member states almost €100bn annually. It hopes therefore that this initiative can contribute to bringing urban mobility into the third dimension – airspace. Germany in particular, with the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure recently joining the UIC2 partnership through a Memorandum of Understanding, is acknowledged as a lead market for urban air mobility and drone technology innovations.
