CAAS Establishes International Centre for Aviation Innovation to Tackle Increasing Demand for Air Travel

  • 11 Jan 2024

The Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) has set up an International Centre for Aviation Innovation (ICAI) to promote the development and implementation of technologies for the aviation industry on 10 January 2024. The ICAI aims to address the growing demand for air travel by conducting research and development (R&D) in four key areas: next generation air navigation services, automated and smart airports, unmanned aviation systems, and sustainable aviation. To support interoperability across different standards, ICAI will adopt a vendor-agnostic approach and develop solutions with open architecture principles.

Focusing on the Asia-Pacific region, where air travel demand is anticipated to rise steadily over the next few decades, Singapore, a major air hub in the Asia-Pacific and an international centre for business and innovation, will be home to the ICAI. The aviation industry must tackle intricate cross-border challenges to meet the soaring demand for air travel following the COVID-19 pandemic. These include ground and air space capacity limitations, staffing shortages, and the need to decarbonize air travel. While digitalization, automation, and clean energy technologies are available to help address these concerns, they are often challenging and expensive to implement.

Therefore, to help the aviation sector leverage technology more effectively, ICAI will collaborate with governments, industry, and research institutes worldwide to pool resources and expertise to create solutions for the region. This will facilitate transformative changes that might otherwise be difficult for individual stakeholders to achieve, mitigate the risks of innovation, and enhance capacity building in the Asia-Pacific region. Mr Han Kok Juan, Director-General of CAAS, will chair the ICAI’s Board, and Mr Patrick Ky, former Executive Director of the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), will serve as its founding Chief Executive Officer.

Jewel Changi Airport. Image: Changi Airport Group

The ICAI will work on two horizontals: translating research to deployment and capability development for the aviation system. It will adopt a broad-based, cross-domain approach to drive innovation in four key vertical domains:

1. Next-Generation Air Navigation Services

To develop and test new concepts to optimize enroute and terminal air traffic handling capacities, enable seamless air navigation services, with the setting up of a Regional Experimentation Platform, a virtual and distributed platform that provides regional users with common airspace situational awareness on weather and aircraft flight routes.

2. Automated & Smart Airport

To drive Total Airport Management, digitalization of airport processes, and automation of repetitive and labor-intensive tasks, manage proof-of-concept trials and test-bedding efforts in actual airport operating conditions, and engage industry to produce and deploy solutions at scale.

3. Unmanned Aircraft Systems

To develop and implement new operating concepts to integrate air traffic management for unmanned and manned aircraft while facilitating safe and secure adoption of advanced air mobility technology in urbanized and densely populated areas.

4. Sustainable Aviation

To develop new concepts to minimize the carbon footprint of air travel through optimizing air and ground operations, including advanced demand-capacity balancing, performance-based navigation, and optimization of gate-to-gate trajectory.

To kickstart ICAI’s work on next-generation air navigation services, CAAS will engage ICAI to manage Stage 1 of Singapore’s Aviation Transformation Programme (ATP) 2.0, which is funded by Singapore’s National Research Foundation for S$140 million. The program will develop new concepts of operations and prototypes, enhance the ecosystem of research institutes, and train researchers, scientists, and engineers to advance next-generation air navigation services. CAAS will also explore engaging the ICAI on a similar arrangement for the other three vertical domains the ICAI is working on.

Mr Patrick Ky, ICAI’s Chief Executive Officer said:

It’s a privilege to lead this new organization. It’s a challenging but exciting task to build partnerships that can deliver tangible and operational results in such a complex environment. I look forward to working with Singaporean and regional partners to build a dynamic and sustainable aviation system.”

Mr Han Kok Juan, Director-General of CAAS, said: 

CAAS is happy to contribute to this international effort by setting up and funding the International Centre for Aviation Innovation and to catalyse its work by having the centre manage our Aviation Transformation Programme for next generation air navigation services. But we cannot do this by ourselves. We will reach out to other governments, industry and research institutes to come onboard. We are delighted to have Mr Patrick Ky take on the appointment as the founding CEO. Patrick has extensive expertise and experience in driving innovation and fostering collaboration across governments and with the private sector. We are confident that Patrick will help the ICAI establish a new model of collaboration and take the development and adoption of technology in the aviation sector to a new level.”

You May Also LikeAAIS