Preliminary Requirement Elicitation for Urban Air Mobility in India – A Mission-Based Approach

The Real GDP of India has been estimated to grow by 7.8% in Q1 of FY 2025-26, and urbanization is projected to be 50% by 2050. At the same time, India’s population is projected to reach 8.5 billion by 2030, and road traffic congestion is already a crisis in many Indian cities. This only implies a significant increase in demand for Urban Air Mobility (UAM) services in India. While the concept of UAM has been around since the 1940s, much has changed in terms of the stakeholder needs for UAM services; airspace utilization for urban civil and military air operations; the urban infrastructure; adoption of new technologies for reliable and uninterrupted communication, navigation and surveillance; and associated risks. Firstly, this paper explores the India-specific UAM ecosystem along with its boundaries, environments, and constraints. Factors studied include: restrictions in air operations due to India specific climate zones and ionospheric disturbances; usage of Indian airspace zones; and Indian city layouts. Secondly, this paper takes a mission-based approach to conduct a preliminary requirement elicitation exercise for UAM in Indian cities. Five UAM missions have been considered: 1) medicine/organ delivery, 2) passenger transport, and 3) cargo delivery. To enrich the study and its outcomes, these missions have been analysed specifically for the city of Bengaluru. For each mission, all relevant stakeholders have been identified and their needs/requirements have been elicited and analysed. Elicitation techniques used have largely been document analysis, brainstorming and scenario simulations. The paper includes a comprehensive requirements matrix, traced to missions and stakeholders. The next step in this study is to validate and enhance the requirements elicitation exercise by interacting directly with relevant stakeholders. Following that, different UAM architectures would be evolved and evaluated based on critical criteria identified by key stakeholders.