6. Development priorities

This chapter presents strategic development priorities (DPs), which cover the prioritised actions needed to develop future ATM functionalities and roll-out phase D of the Digital European Sky vision. They consider the human dimension of the transformative changes ahead and SESAR’s strategic research and innovation agenda (SRIA) (1). The priorities address new development challenges and expectations for phase D that were not previously envisaged, such as but not limited to:

  • the vision to make Europe the most efficient and environmentally friendly sky to fly in the world;
  • the integration of innovative air mobility (IAM);
  • higher airspace operations;
  • integration of the next generation aircraft for zero-/low-emission aviation by 2035;
  • a new security and defence context for ATM in Europe.

The priorities are categorised in accordance with the SESAR Innovation Pipeline (2), the process used to transform promising ideas and concepts into tangible solutions for industrialisation and accelerate their market uptake. These include exploratory research, covering fundamental research (FR TRL 0–1) and applied research (AR TRL 1–2), and industrial research (IR) (TRL 2–6), including fast-track (up to TRL 7). Each DP details specific actions to be taken and links these with the relevant flagship (3) in the current SESAR Digital European Sky programme.

Table 11 lists the 12 priorities for future development activities in ATM from 2025.

T11

Table 11: Strategic development priorities (DPs)[4]


(1)            SESAR 3 JU, Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda.

(2)            SESAR 3 JU, SESAR Innovation Pipeline.

(3)            SESAR 3 JU, SESAR 3 JU flagships; see Section A.9.2.

(4)            AR, applied research; FR, fundamental research.