DACUS aims at the development of a service-oriented Demand and Capacity Balancing (DCB) process for drone traffic management. This overall objective responds to an operational and technical need in European drone operations for a tangible solution integrating the functionalities of the SESAR U-space services for Drone Traffic Management (DTM) to produce timely, efficient and safe decisions. The project intends to integrate in a consistent DCB solution the relevant demand and capacity influence factors (such as CNS performances availability), definitions (such as airspace structure), processes (such as separation management), and services (such as Strategic and Tactical Conflict Resolution). Therefore, to achieve the overall DACUS objective, five specific objectives are set: 1. Develop a drone DCB process, from strategic to tactical phase, integrating uncertainty of planned operations and guided by the definition of a U-space performance scheme that include the development of metrics for airspace capacity appropriate for an environment with no human controller. 2. Develop innovative services algorithms and enabling models and technologies as functional blocks of DCB process, able to support large number of simultaneous operations and to design and manage efficient and safe drone trajectories. 3. Define a structure for Very Low Level (VLL) airspace and a set of airspace rules that optimises the trade-off between capacity and safety, including the definition of separation management process. 4. Find the optimal balance between on-board separation intelligence and U-space separation service intelligence in tactical separation depending. 5. Refine Communication, Navigation and Surveillance (CNS) requirements in support of tactical and procedural separation, with a focus on urban environment.

IMPETUS will research on the application of the ‘micro-services’ paradigm as a flexible and cost efficient solution for lifecycle support of the expected high variety of drones and missions. Moreover, IMPETUS will explore how to design an Smart UTM Concept taking into consideration the ‘Function as a Service’ paradigm to develop a cloud-based server-less environment that will be characterized by its scalability to respond to multiple users with diverse business models, its mechanisms to assure the data quality and integrity, and its flexibility to facilitate the integration with manned traffic management systems. IMPETUS consortium consists of key stakeholders that provide complementary views on the current and envisioned UTM and ATM information management processes. ALTITUDE ANGEL offers its current UTM capabilities to support recreational and commercial drone operations under VLS and its experience in previous engineering tests for B-VLS and autonomous tests. JEPPESEN, with the technological support of TU DARMSTADT, contributes with its expertise in Information Technology Services to ensure the quality of aeronautical safety-critical data. BOEING offers its expertise to analyse if SWIM standards can be used as the main bridge to exchange UTM and ATM information. INECO strengths the consortium as certified company in the commercial use of drones for bridges inspection services and with its expertise on innovative Smart solutions based on IT technologies (Big Data and Business Intelligence among others). This experience is shared with CRIDA, which is the reference research centre in integration and analysis of multiple aeronautical data sources through advanced data analytics in order to support decision-making at ENAIRE, Air Navigation Service Provider in Spain. Finally, C-ASTRAL provides a wide view and extensive market experience for diverse drone related business models, with applications in surveying, border protection or surveillance operations among others.