# Benefits of Advanced Air Mobility for Society and Environment: A Case Study of Ohio
## 1 Introduction  
AAM infrastructure will enable and support a wide range of applications, such as passenger transportation, cargo delivery, infrastructure inspection, and precision agriculture by uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) in the low altitude National Airspace System (NAS) [1]. The number of daily operations needed to fulfill the demands of these use cases is projected to approach millions in the coming years, outstripping the capacity of the traditional human-centered NAS [2]. Therefore, a digital and flexible transportation framework is being developed that can coordinate among the new NAS users (the AAM users) and existing NAS users and manage the uncrewed air traffic to support ongoing efforts to integrate uncrewed aircraft into the lower airspace and ensure their safety and security from environmental risks. This framework is referred to as the AAM architecture. An overview of the different primary stakeholders and components of the AAM architecture with their contextual linkages and functions is visualized in Figure 1. We considered two types of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or AAM aircraft in this architecture. The first one is the _electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle (eVTOL)_, which have been developed to transport people and cargo through local, regional, inter-city, and urban spaces. eVTOLs are expected to significantly cut journey times relative to conventional ground transportation systems, while offering decreased pollution footprints, as wellas increased operational safety, among other benefits [3]. The second one is the _drone_ or small uncrewed aircraft systems (sUASs), which has already been used to transport small packages quickly and effectively. In this paper, the terms 'drones' and 'SUASs' are used interchangeably. These vehicles have novel designs and capabilities, and are mostly intended to operate at altitudes less than 400 ft (120 m) above ground level in uncontrolled airspace [4]. A _vertiport_ is considered to be an area designed for an UAV to perform take off, landing and recharging, which can be an airport, heliport, top of a building, or any other setup based on the location and type of application. To ensure safe UAS traffic management (UTM), the proposed AAM architecture is based on sharing of data through a distributed information network following a set of protocols and functions [5]. The UAVs' telemetry data--such as position, velocity, flight intent, remote identification (RID), etc.--will be monitored by ground control stations via radio frequency link, and UAVs' movement will also be detected and tracked by the surveillance systems via ground sensors and radar. The data from ground control stations and surveillance systems will be routed to _UAS Service Suppliers (USSs)_. The role of USS is to act as a third party UTM service provider for the UAS operators. They will offer information about the planned activities of airspace to the UAS operators so that they may plan and schedule their flights accordingly to accomplish their operations safely and efficiently. USSs will also be responsible for archiving operational data in historical databases for online and post-flight data analysis, regulatory, and operator accountability purposes [2]. _Supplemental Data Service Providers (SDSPs)_ provide advanced flight support services, such as topographical and obstacle data, specialized meteorological data, surveillance, and constraint information to USSs. UAS operators will receive approvals, advisories and other UTM services from USSs and operate their fleet of UAVs accordingly for different applications, such as passenger and cargo transportation, bridge inspections, agriculture and livestock observation, medical delivery, etc. Thus, the physical and software infrastructure needed to enable these AAM applications include vertiports, ground control stations, surveillance systems, USSs and SDSPs. These components are collectively referred to as the _AAM infrastructure_.