OUR RESEARCH PROGRAMS

A leading collaborative structure that fosters interdisciplinary research toward a sustainable future for aviation.

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PROGRAMS AND PROJECTS

The particularity of ISA’s research lies in the balance of disciplinary contributions between human and social sciences and exact or engineering sciences. This balance allows a global approach to highlight the interactions between the socio-economic causal sphere and the techno-physical sphere that lead human societies towards alternative futures for energy and aviation.

ASM Aviation Sustainability Metrics

This upstream program aims to establish and evolve an ISA set of metrics for assessing the sustainability of the aviation sector on very broad perimeters, such as commercial aviation from upstream to downstream (energy-airline-tourism), or on a narrower segment or subset of the sector, or as a result of use changes.

AEROMAPS : the IAM of aviation

This program aims to build an Integrated Assessment Model (IAM) for the commercial aviation sector (passengers and freight).This model will be the repository of partial models from other programs and data from the aeronautical system. AeroMAPS is the founding program and the integration ground for ISA’s quantitative modeling enterprise.

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TSAR Towards Sustainaible Air RouteS

This program will contribute to the development of new routing models toward air traffic that delivers on the promise of increased operational efficiency and mitigates non-CO2 effects (contrails). It is also within this program that we study the impact of sustainability requirements on the travel market and airline profitability models. In addition, the TSAR program will shed light on the economic, social, and other consequences of likely global warming levels on commercial fleet operations.

SAFH2 Sustainable Aviation Fuel and Hydrogen

By implementing a life-cycle analysis of the entire production, transportation, and consumption of SAF, this program will measure the sustainability gain and feasibility of energy pathways using various SAF as substitutes for kerosene. The economic and social implications of such a substitution will be examined on the basis of production ramp-up scenarios and inter-sectoral trade-offs for access to SAF volumes. A second component of this program consists in studying, with the same approach, the substitution of kerosene by hydrogen.

ERA Electric Regional Aviation

General aviation is likely to play an increasing role in low-impact continental multimodal mobility. Sustainability assessment and prospective analysis of its growth trajectory, investment and territorial infrastructure needs, acceptability issues and the colateral effect on other aviation segments and on land mobility will feed the research actions carried out in this program.

FPW Aviation Finance Path Way

The transition to a more sustainable global fleet will likely depend on the financial attractiveness and profitability level of the sector in the new regulatory and climate context. This program will address the economic feasibility of fleet renewal in relation to airline business models, the financial capabilities of institutional and private investors and leasing operators. This core issue will be extended to the financing of technological innovation for new aircraft, of airport (fuel) infrastructure renewal and of the new sustainable ATM

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PUBLICATIONS

ISA’s publications enable the dissemination of new knowledge through interdisciplinary research and provide new holistic integrative models and diagnostic methods to perform a multidimensional analysis of the air transport sector transition.

Liu, Q., (2026), Enhancing airline multimarket competition analysis with a pairwise competitive intensity index based on weighted Jaccard index, Journal of Air Transport Management, Volume 13.

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Pollet, F., Lutz, F., Planès, T., Delbecq, S. & Budinger, M. (2025). A generic life cycle assessment tool for overall aircraft design. Applied Energy 399, 126514.

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Salles, S., Ricci, S., Gourdain, N., & Druot, T. (2025). Multidisciplinary assessment of the impact of temperature rise and headwind on aircraft take-off performance. Climatic Change 178 (11), 200.

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Païs, B., Hamelin, L., Gondran, A.& Simatos, F. Planetary boundaries and regional justice: Rethinking aviation transitions through AESA. From Less Bad to Good Enough, Centre for Absolute Sustainability, Sep 2025, Helsingør, Denmark.

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Salgas, A., Lafforgue, G., Planès, T. & Delbecq, S. (2025). Enhanced marginal abatement cost curves for analysing and designing aviation decarbonisation scenarios. Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, vol. 146.

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Ouvrage : Juilliet Clair et Olivier Jean-Marc, De Blériot à Airbus. Une histoire des industries aéronautiques européennes 1910-2024, Paris, Armand Colin - Dunod - Hachette, 2025, 436 p.

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Salgas, A., Sun, J., Delbecq, S., Planès, T., & Lafforgue, G. (2024). Compilation and Applications of an Open-Source Dataset on Global Air Traffic Flows and Carbon Emissions. Journal of Open Aviation Science, 2(1).

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Arriolabengoa, S., Planès, T., Mattei, P., Cariolle, D., & Delbecq, S. (2024). Lightweight climate models could be useful for assessing aviation mitigation strategies and moving beyond the CO2-equivalence metrics debate. Commun. Earth Environ., Nature, 5, 716.

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Ouvrage : Olivier Jean-Marc et Pech Rémy (dir.), Histoire de Toulouse et de la métropole, Toulouse, Privat, septembre 2024, 810 p. Avec, entre autres, un chapitre co-écrit avec Zuliani Jean-Marc : "Cent ans d'histoire de l'aéronautique à Toulouse (1917-2019)" pp. 713-745.

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Bornes, L., Letondal, C., & Vingerhoeds, R. (2023). Understanding the Indirect Effects of Interactive Systems Within Systems of Systems. INSIGHT, 26(4), 18-21.

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OPEN POSITIONS

No open position in research at the moment

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NEWS / AVIATION