Independent Business Group Sweden AB (IBG) have lately intensified its efforts within the Urban Air Mobility (UAM) domain. IBG has become renowned for its system design and infrastructure approach supporting municipalities to meet the challenges and possibilities that this new mode of mobility can give to the cities. The city and municipality of Norrköping in Sweden where IBG is headquartered, is a new member of the UAM Initiative Cities Community (UIC2) of EU’s Smart Cities Marketplace and first Swedish City to sign the Manifesto released during the Amsterdam Drone Week December 2020.
The membership was natural since Norrköping hosts other important UAM stakeholders, such as the headquarters of the Swedish Transport agency (Transportstyrelsen), LFV (the publicly owned air navigation service provider), Linköping University and SMHI (the publicly owned Meteorological agency). The extended region surrounding Norrköping is one of the most populated areas of Sweden and has a long history within the Swedish aviation sector.
Amongst other European Union municipalities, Norrköping understands the importance of Urban Air Mobility (UAM) services characterised from very-low altitude air traffic overpopulated areas with zero emission air vehicles (e.g drones and air taxis). This includes tasks and responsibilities towards integrated and sustainable urban mobility, which extends the multilevel governance of U-Space down to the level of local and regional authorities.
– We are very proud to become one of the leading Swedish Municipality to join this initiative and contribute to ongoing city-centric work streams on integrated mobility planning, regulations, financing, and social acceptance of urban air mobility, says Reidar Svedahl the chairman of the community planning board at Norrköping Municipality.
Significantly more consequential to the conventional aviation, the Urban Air Mobility requires a much greater involvement by municipalities in relation to urban planning, integrated mobility, regulations, and community dialogues. The UIC2 Manifesto on the Multilevel Governance of the Urban Sky, released early December 2020 during the Amsterdam Drone Week, aims to get acknowledgement by the European Unition U-Space Regulatory Framework with the aim of being implemented across EU’s Member States through their legislative processes. It is an important way for municipalities to provide their input to the future and responsible roll-out of Urban Air Mobility.
– It is with great pleasure we see the city of Norrköping joining the UIC2. Cities and regions have a central role in facilitating and accelerating responsible innovation for urban air mobility services and thus to contribute to the integrated and sustainable transition of urban mobility, says Dr Vassilis Agouridas, Leader of the UIC2 and Head of EU Public Co-creation & Ecosystem Outreach at Airbus.
