RefMap’s plenary meeting in Athens, Greece on May 2024 was a great chance to discuss thoroughly all the intriguing issues that reflect the project’s aims and goals: how to reduce the environmental impact of air travel for airlines and Unmanned Aerial Systems by creating a digital service that optimises flight trajectories on both micro and macro levels.

In the beginning, and after a short introduction by our coordinator, Gerardo Zampino from our partner, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, the Future Needs team, namely Kyriaki Daskaloudi reviewed the communication and dissemination activities completed so far and outlined upcoming actions. Over the past months, RefMap partners have been active in conferences, published scientific papers, and maintained a robust online presence, including building a supportive social media community. Kyriaki has explained this collective effort is managed and aligned with the partners on the next steps.  

Later on, Anna Palaiologk, Yannis Kitsos, and Akash Mishra from Future Needs led a detailed discussion on defining the minimum viable product of RefMap and the criteria for developing new business models for aviation. The project’s use cases, both large-scale for airliners and small-scale for drones were thoroughly discussed, with several partners providing insights on the final framework and visualisation.

Additionally, the consortium got detailed updates of RefMap’s work around the deep-learning methods for flow prediction and trajectory optimisation by the respective partners Delft University of Technology, AgentFly Technologies, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Using a low-fidelity Computational Fluid Dynamics (CDF) model, RefMap’s partners are now able to predict the wind around realistic urban areas which can be used to explore and optimise Urban Air Vehicles (UAV) trajectories. Also, using high-fidelity Large Eddy Simulations (LES), RefMap partners can predict the wind turbulence around buildings with high accuracy. This allows them to better describe the turbulence phenomena in the proximity of the buildings and use these results for the training of the optimisation tool for the trajectories of drones. You can read more about this topic on the project’s website here.

After two days of intense discussions, we had the chance to unwind and connect below the Acropolis, in the historic part of the city during a social dinner hosted by Mr. Dimitris Tzempelikos from the Municipality of Egaleo, who we thank for the warm hospitality, excellent catering, and the organisation of the meeting and external activities.

This transnational meeting, besides facilitating our collaboration in the project, was also a great chance to rejoin our partners from Sweden, Netherlands, UK, Greece, Spain, Czech Republic and Portugal, namely Ricardo Vinuesa, Evelyn Otero Sola, Gerardo Zampino, Elias Zea, and Hakkı AKSOY from KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Mirjam Snellen and Camilo Ignacio Andino Cappagli from Delft University of Technology & TU Delft | Aerospace Engineering, Milan Rollo, Jan Straka, and Lukáš Koranda from AgentFly Technologies, Manuel Soler, María Cerezo Magaña, Abolfazl Simorgh, and Adrián Zarzoso Vivas from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Sophia Kalakou, Nuno Silva, Margarida Santos, and Helena Almeida from ISCTE – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Sotiris Xydis, Giorgos Anagnostopoulos, Angelos Maroudis, Kostantinos Iliakis, and Panagiotis Eleytherakis from ICCS – NTUA, Antonio José Torija Martínez, Marc Green, Sam Barret and Mike Wood from the University of Salford, and Gareth Whatmore from DronePrep. It was great to see you again all in person. Let’s keep in touch online till our next meeting!

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