New infrastructures for Urban Air Mobility systems: a systematic review on vertiport location and capacity

New technological developments pave the way for passengers and goods transport provided by electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicles and introduce the Urban Air Mobility (UAM) opportunity. Adding a vertical dimension in transportation system supply could bring some improvements, for instance for faster intra/inter-city connections. However, there are several aspects that have to be further examined such as regulations, travel demand, public acceptance, and ground infrastructures called vertiports, these latter being the interchange nodes between ground and aerial transport modes. Vertiport position and capacity, with their related relevant factors, are among the most critical aspects of UAM, which could strongly limit its development. Identifying advantages and disadvantages of possible solutions for locating and designing suitably vertiports is relevant in order to set guidelines for these new infrastructures, similarly to what has been done for other transport infrastructures – like airports, railways, roads. In this perspective, this paper wants to provide a systematic review that deals only on vertiport characteristics, in order to compare the most important approaches and results presented in the literature. Particularly, the paper focuses on the main features that influence vertiport location and capacity and identifies research gaps in order to encourage future studies.