We held the first Certiflight Advisory Board in Naples, Italy, on May 17.
The event brought together about 50 experts, including representatives of the European Commission, EUSPA (EU Agency for the Space Programme and funder of the Certiflight project), ENAC (Italian National Civil Aviation Authority), EUROCONTROL, drone associations, pilots and general aviation, as well as the project partners.
The purpose of the meeting was to illustrate the project broadly to the stakeholders first and then discuss its objectives and solution design.
Taking turns at the table, the experts discussed on panels about the project’s challenges and the surrounding ecosystem, such as the planned development of the U-space, the use of Galileo OSNMA service and blockchain and the concept of Smart Contracts.
Another key part of the meeting was to analyse the impact of Certiflight on safety, society and economy.
The workshop had constant interactive discussion aimed at collecting stakeholders’ feedback, even through specific real-time polls and the explorary survey. (which we invite to fill up).
The consolidated data will be presented in a dedicated document and will be of great value for the further definition of the Certiflight services.
In conclusion, the statement that best sums up the spirit of the meeting is “Certiflight is the project that is putting all the pieces together”, expressed by Carmen Aguilera, from EUSPA. This strengthen the role that Certiflight has among other relevant research projects funded by the European Union.
According to a participant in the Advisory Board:
The Certiflight project certainly responds to legislative and compliance needs of U-space. In the area of integration with Galileo OSNMA, the project will solve the problem of detecting areas where someone intentionally spoofs the satellite signal. Thanks to Certiflight, it will be possible to mark areas potentially at risk of fraud in UTM/ATM systems. On the other hand, Certiflight provides credibility to the process of archiving and storing historical flight data. This will be particularly important in the case of large-scale operations, when one of the parties: a client, a third party, a person ordering a service, a prosecutor, an investigator will need reliable data on flights performed (historical data). Importantly, Certiflight via Smart Contracts, will enable electronic signing of U-space events, understood as complex flight plans, geographical zones, telemetry, etc.
In a nutshell, the Certiflight project performs the function of ensuring data consistency and reliability. In today’s world full of cybercriminals, this project seems extremely necessary. I keep my fingers crossed for the implementation.
The project is coordinated by Topview s.r.l. and includes in its consortium companies and organizations with proven U-space experience such as D-Flight, UpVision, Unifly, DTA, The Sara Project, TuDelft, Way4WARD, Aria United, EuroUSC España and EuroUSC Italia.
Certiflight was presented at the call HORIZON-EUSPA-2021-SPACE-02-53: EGNSS applications for the digital age and has become one of the projects selected by the European Space Programme Agency (EUSPA). The project starts in November 2022 and will last for two and a half years (30 months).
More information is available on the project website