DEPA 2070
DEvelopment Pathways for Aviation up to 2070
Duration: 1.January.2022 - 31.December.2024
The project “DEPA 2070“ is concentrated on a broad range of research fields with high relevance for DLR internal research activities but also for external stakeholders. The first priority of the project is set on trend analyses with a special focus on air transport market development, aviation technologies, alternative fuels and maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO). In addition, framework conditions (e.g. population and economic growth perspectives, energy prices, crises,…) are investigated as they might also have a significant impact on air transport’s future development. Based on these analyses the second priority of the project is set on the design of scenario and vehicle specific technology roadmaps which are used to develop representative vehicle design concepts that cover all parts of passenger transportation and represent the state-of-the-art in research. Within this context one scenario assumes a strongly accelerated technology development until 2070 while the other DEPA 2070 scenario assumes a rather evolutionary technology development.
In consideration of the most probable demand and fleet development which addresses also the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and the rise of sustainable aviation fuels’ usage in the air transport sector this set of analyses allows to investigate the manifold impacts on the environment and the economy as well as on mobility and infrastructure development. For this purpose, noise impacts at local level as well as emission developments at global scale (i.e. CO2 and NOx emissions) will be evaluated.
In addition, the economic contribution of the air transport sector to the overall economy in terms of employment and gross value added is estimated and completed by additional studies on mobility and connectivity impacts over the long-term. With this approach, the project contributes significantly to the identification and evaluation of promising aviation technologies from an overall system perspective that covers questions of the future energy mix of air transport and needed infrastructure at the same time.