Isabel C. Metz

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Research Associate at German Aerospace Center (DLR)

Since the Wright brothers demonstrated the first powered, sustained, and controlled flight in 1903, the airspace has been shared between birds and humans. Novel aircraft and advanced mobility concepts such as urban air mobility (UAM) are emerging in full swing. In that concept, a safe and efficient aviation transportation system will use highly aut...

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) has emerged as a potential game changer for urban transportation, promising faster, more efficient and affordable services. However, beyond the visionary concepts, it is crucial to explore and discuss the opportunities and challenges of UAM and vertidrome operations also from a research perspective. The DLR research project...

Urban Air Mobility is a new concept of regional aviation that has been growing in popularity as a solution to the issue of ever-increasing ground traffic. Electric vehicles with vertical take-off and landing capabilities are being developed by numerous market companies as a result of the push toward environmentally sustainable aviation. The next st...

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) is a new air transportation system for passengers and cargo in urban environments, enabled by new technologies and integrated into multimodal transportation systems. The vision of UAM comprises the mass use in urban and suburban environments, complementing existing transportation systems and contributing to the decarbonizat...

Collisions between aircraft and wildlife (i.e., wildlife strikes) pose a serious threat toward the safety of aircraft, its crew, and passengers. The effects of COVID-19 related travel restrictions on wildlife strikes are unknown. With this study, we aim to address this information gap by assessing the changes of wildlife hazard management performan...

Advanced mobility concepts such as Urban Air Mobility are emerging in full swing. In that concept, a safe and efficient aviation transportation system will use highly automated aircraft that will transport passengers or cargo at low altitudes within and between metropolitan regions. To accomplish these missions, new types of aircraft which are some...

Urban air mobility is a rapidly growing field of research. While drones or unmanned aerial vehicles have been operated mainly in the private and military sector in the past, an increasing range of opportunities is opening up for commercial applications. A new multitude of passenger-carrying drone or air taxi concepts promises to fulfill the dream o...

Urban air mobility is a rapidly growing field of research. While drones or unmanned aerial vehicles have been operated mainly in the private and military sector in the past, an increasing range of opportunities is opening up for commercial applications. A new multitude of passenger carrying drone or air taxi concepts promise to fulfill the dream of...

View Video Presentation: https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2021-3197.vid Efficiency, safety, feasibility, sustainability and affordability are among the key characteristics of future urban mobility. The project “HorizonUAM – Urban Air Mobility Research at the German Aerospace Center (DLR)” provides first answers to this vision by pooling existing competenc...

View Video Presentation: https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2021-3199.vid HorizonUAM is a DLR project to research the vision of urban air mobility. One important topic is the safety and security aspect. This paper discusses the safety and security considerations in the topic areas of: safe autonomy, reliable multisensor navigation, robust and efficient comm...

Bird strike prevention in civil aviation has traditionally focused on the airport perimeter. Since the risk of especially damaging bird strikes outside the airport boundaries is rising, this PhD thesis researches the safety potential of operational bird strike prevention involving pilots and controllers. In such a concept, controllers would be equi...

The report presents policy options for the successful integration of drones into the transport system. How can countries reap the benefits of drone transport while limiting risks? The report examines concerns about the acceptability, efficiency and sustainability of drone transport. The analysis covers passenger and freight drones with different pa...

Existing studies suggest that drones may have the potential to reduce energy use in transport and hence CO2 and other transport-related emissions (Linchant et al., 2015). On the other hand, there are clear environmental challenges relating to the deployment of drones. These relate to noise and vibration impacts, as well as light pollution that will...

Bird strike prevention in civil aviation has traditionally focused on the airport perimeter. Since the risk of especially damaging bird strikes outside the airport boundaries is rising, this paper investigates the safety potential of operational bird strike prevention involving pilots and controllers. In such a concept, controllers would be equippe...

Involving air traffic controllers and pilots into the bird strike prevention process is considered an essential step to increase aviation and avian safety. Prior to implementing operational measures such as real-time warning systems, it is vital to evaluate their feasibility. This paper studies the efficacy of a bird strike advisory system for air...

Collisions between birds and aircraft pose a severe threat to aviation and avian safety. To understand and prevent these bird strikes, knowledge about the factors leading to these bird strikes is vital. However, even though it is a global issue, data availability strongly varies and is difficult to put into a global picture. This paper aims to clos...

Current bird strike prevention at airports is performed by wildlife control units and concentrates mainly on keeping birds from the perimeter. This research paper focuses on an approach for procedural bird strike prevention involving pilots and air traffic controllers in the process. A system using bird movement information from radar to predict po...

To analyse bird strike occurrences as well as the effect of operational risk-reducing measures, a fast-time simulation environment was developed. It allows to simulate bird movement and air traffic simultaneously and to detect collisions as well as near misses between birds and aircraft. The set-up was validated with Monte-Carlo simulations involvi...

This paper presents a collision avoidance algorithm to prevent bird strikes for aircraft departing from an airport. By using trajectory-information of aircraft and birds, the algorithm predicts potential collisions. Collision avoidance is performed by delaying departing aircraft until they can follow a collision-free trajectory. An implementation o...

The aerosphere is utilized by billions of birds, moving for different reasons and from short to great distances spanning tens of thousands of kilometres. The aerosphere, however, is also utilized by aviation which leads to increasing conflicts in and around airfields as well as en‐route. Collisions between birds and aircraft cost billions of euros...

Annually, thousands of birds collide with aircraft. The impact usually has lethal consequences for the bird, the involved aircraft can experience severe damage. The highest bird strike risk occurs at low altitudes. Therefore, aircraft within the airport area as well as the adjacent approach and departure corridors are especially vulnerable to colli...

Bird strikes have the potential to cause severe damage to aircraft. Therefore, measures to reduce the risk of bird strikes are performed at airports. However, this risk is not limited to the airport but is increased in the arrival and departure corridors as well. Consequently, a significant amount of bird strikes occurs outside the direct airport a...

This paper presents a fast-time simulation environment for assessing the risk of bird strikes in aviation. An existing air traffic simulator was enhanced in order to simulate air and bird traffic simultaneously and to recognize collisions between birds and aircraft. Furthermore, a method was developed to generate bird movement information from diff...

Bird strikes have operational impacts and cause economic loss to the aviation industry. In the worst case, the damages resulting from bird strikes lead to crashes. The highest risk for bird strikes lies in the area below 3000 ft and thus mainly in airport environments. Despite intense efforts from the airports in controlling the local bird populati...

Collisions between birds and aircraft, so called bird strikes, pose a considerable risk for aviation safety. Because risk of bird strike is highest below 3000ft, current mitigation measures mostly focus on keeping birds away from airport grounds. Despite these efforts, the number of bird strike occurrences is still significant. The PhD project pres...

Birds pose a remarkable threat to aviation safety. Since 1960, bird strikes – collisions between birds and aircraft – have caused at least 30 hull losses of commercial aircraft, 19 of them resulting in a total of 194 fatalities. Due to increasing population sizes, especially of large birds and a rise in global air traffic, the danger of bird strike...

The BlueSky Open Air Traffic Simulator developed by the Control \& Simulation section of TU Delft aims at supporting research for analysing Air Traffic Management concepts by providing an open source simulation platform. The goal of this study was to complement BlueSky with aircraft performance models in order to enable performance-related Air Traf...

This master thesis presents the development of an aircraft performance model for air traffic simulators based exclusively on open sources.

The simulation campaign “Rudimentary Arrival management on Flexible Airspaces” (RAMFA) examines the problem of complex merge point structures on behalf of a most simple controller assistance. While other DLR projects (FAGI, flexiGuide) assume that air traffic controllers need a high-sophisticated arrival management tool with a broad bandwidth of fu...

This paper reports first results from a workshop to assess the feasibility of a new method of tool-supported time-based surface management. Using high-fidelity human-in-the-loop simulations, ground controllers had to manage traffic in adherence to time-based surface trajectories while being supported by a surface management system prototype and a d...

Facing the challenges of increasing traffic load and strong demands for reduction of noise and fuel consumption, research in air traffic management (abr. ATM) needs to be enforced . Among others, human in the loop simulations are a basic tool to conduct this research . Regarding changes in the main research objectives, technical development and use...

Moderne Verkehrsflugzeuge sind zunehmend mit 4D-Flight Management Systems (FMS) ausgestattet. Ein 4D-FMS berechnet für jeden Flug die Flugbahn eines Flugzeugs und über-prüft deren Einhaltung laufend. Durch die Kopplung von 4D-FMS mit bodengebundenen Pla-nungsinstrumenten erhofft sich die Forschung zusätzliche Verbesserungen im Luftverkehrs-ablauf....

Das Institut für Flugführung ist eine der weltweit führenden Forschungsinstitutionen im Air Traffic Management-Bereich. Es setzt unter anderem den Luftverkehrssimulator Narsim zur Untersuchung neuer Verfahren und Systeme ein. Der Narsim stellt dabei die Bewegungen der Luftfahrzeuge realitätsnah dar. Entsprechend der Ausrüstung der Luftfahrzeuge (z....

This document describes the requirements on a 4D Flight Management System needed to evaluate the concepts and systems developed within the project flexiGuide. These requirements will not be used to build a real 4D-FMS. Within this part of flexiGuide air traffic simulations will be performed for evaluation. Therefore the requirements aim on building...

Das Institut für Flugführung ist eine der weltweit führenden Einrichtungen im Bereich der Luftverkehrs-forschung. Hierzu verwendet das Institut für Flugführung unter anderem Luftverkehrssimulatoren, die realitätsnah die Bewegung der Luftfahrzeuge am Boden und in der Luft nachbilden können. Je nach Einsatzzweck existieren unterschiedliche Simulatore...