AEROSCOPE, AN OPEN DATABASE TO STUDY AVIATION TARFFIC FLOWS AND ASSOCIATED ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT

AeroSCOPE was born from a simple observation: no sufficiently detailed open-source air traffic database currently exists. This lack of transparency limits our ability to assess how each region or country contributes to aviation’s overall environmental impact. In the context of AeroMAPS, it also makes it more difficult to seamlessly produce transition scenarios tailored to these scales.

AeroSCOPE partially addresses this gap by compiling regional open data sources where available. However, some parts of the world remain uncovered. To cover these, estimation techniques based on socio-economic data were used to approximate air traffic and associated emissions on a global air route network, reconstructed from Wikipedia. By doing so, AeroSCOPE makes this data freely accessible, allowing users to explore the geographical distribution of air transport and analyse disparities in usage through an interactive interface. Beyond this, AeroSCOPE serves as a key input for AeroMAPS, providing a partitionable dataset that defines the starting point for regional decarbonisation scenarios.

It is important to acknowledge the limitations of AeroSCOPE. Given the variety and availability of data sources, inaccuracies remain. While the dataset has been validated for use at the continental scale and for major aviation markets, significant uncertainties persist at the level of individual airports or smaller aviation countries. Improvements could come from greater data availability from authorities or through the support of collaborative data collection initiatives such as the OpenSky Network. Looking ahead, AeroSCOPE could build on such developments to become a tool for tracking aviation decarbonisation over time by recording emissions on a yearly basis. This would provide a way to monitor the commitments made by industry stakeholders and assess the effectiveness of different measures as the sector transitions toward lower-carbon operations.

AeroSCOPE is accessible at http://www.aeromaps.eu/aeroscope

Find out more about the methodology in https://doi.org/10.59490/joas.2024.7365