Sustainable and smart urban air mobility: A semi-desirable hub location and sizing approach for vertiport planning

The growing demand for sustainable and smart transportation has increased interest in Urban Air Mobility (UAM). Conversely, the effectiveness and public acceptance of UAM largely depends on strategically positioning vertiports where Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) aircraft will operate. To that end, vertiports must balance accessibility to demand nodes with the obnoxiousness they generate, such as noise, visual pollution, and safety risks. This study considers a transportation framework where vertiports serve as hubs within UAM. In this framework, travelers first commute to the vertiport, move between vertiports via VTOLs, and complete their final leg of journey with ground transportation. We model the vertiports as semi-desirable facilities by capturing their pull (public benefit) effects and push (obnoxious) effects. Despite the growing literature on vertiport planning, existing hub-based formulations rarely integrate this dual nature with budget-limited, size-differentiated network design. To address this gap, we develop a weighted goal programming formulation based on the hub location problem to jointly determine optimal vertiport locations and sizes under budget considerations. The vertiport size accounts for both how much inflow-outflow each vertiport can handle and the degree of obnoxiousness it generates to its surrounding society. To illustrate the applicability of the model, we perform a case study that considers 50 cities located in southwest part of Ohio, USA. We then generate a representative set of solutions for the problem to provide decision support to planners. Results reveal that explicitly incorporating the dual nature of vertiports yields more balanced and socially acceptable network designs and provides a decision-support framework for integrating UAM into future smart mobility systems. • A semi-desirable hub location and sizing model for vertiport location planning is proposed. • The model balances accessibility benefits and community disutility impacts. • To solve the bi-objective problem, we formulate a weighted goal program. • To demonstrate the applicability of the model, we conduct a case study. • The proposed framework supports sustainable and smart urban air mobility system.