The “Cacelli AAM Territorial Evidence Matrix” introduces an evidence-based approach to the preliminary assessment of the territorial and project value of a potential Advanced Air Mobility initiative.
LONDON —
“If you know Heaven and know Earth, you may make your victory complete.”
— Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Know before you decide.
It is an ancient principle of strategy, yet it remains particularly relevant at a time when new technologies are creating investment opportunities and making it possible to imagine infrastructure and mobility systems that did not exist only a few years ago.
It is also one of the principles behind “CATEM — Cacelli AAM Territorial Evidence Matrix”, an evidence-based methodology currently being developed and tested for the preliminary territorial assessment of Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) projects and networks.
CATEM was developed by Riccardo Cacelli, Executive Manager of VERTIPORTS Enterprise Ltd and Senior Advisor to the Advanced Air Mobility Institute in Boston (Usa), while working on an AAM territorial project currently under development.
The starting question is apparently simple: What if, before asking where to build a vertiport, we started by asking why people need to move?
From this comes the fundamental principle of the methodology:
CATEM starts from the territory, not from the aircraft.
Know Before You Decide
A territory is not static.
What we observe today is also the result of transformations that have taken place over time. At the same time, decisions already adopted or currently being adopted may progressively reshape its infrastructure, economy, services, mobility and social organisation.
For this reason, CATEM studies the past, analyses the present and examines the strategic decisions already adopted or being adopted for the future of the territory.
This does not mean predicting the future.
It means understanding what has already been decided, planned or initiated, and examining its relationship with the territory being analysed.
CATEM also does not examine a territory exclusively through data, statistics and documents.
The territory is understood directly.
Where necessary, the analysis is therefore complemented by field observation and engagement with local stakeholders, with the aim of understanding elements that a purely statistical or cartographic representation may not fully reveal.
Understand the Problem Before Designing the Network
Advanced Air Mobility is opening new possibilities for passenger transport and for integrating a new dimension of mobility into existing transport systems.
But the availability of a new aircraft or a new technology does not, by itself, demonstrate that there is a need to use it in a particular territory.
CATEM therefore begins with an earlier question:
What problem should Advanced Air Mobility solve in that territory?
The methodology seeks to understand real mobility needs and to determine whether the proposed project is supported by the available evidence.
Its principle is deliberately the opposite of searching for data to support a configuration that has already been decided: The objective is not to use evidence to justify a predetermined network.
The objective is to let the evidence determine the network.
And the evidence may also indicate that an initially proposed solution should be modified, expanded or abandoned.
That, too, would be an answer.
Before Financial Value, Project Value
CATEM is not designed as a financial or economic investment appraisal tool.
It comes before that.
The methodology focuses on the project and territorial value of a potential AAM initiative: it examines whether the assumptions on which the project is based have a genuine territorial reason to exist.
The analysis may confirm the initial concept, but it may also suggest modifications, additions or, when the evidence does not support it, that the original concept should be reconsidered.
In this sense, CATEM seeks to distinguish the opportunity created by technology from the territorial need to use it.
Only afterwards, once the rationale for the project has been examined, should the relevant technical, regulatory, economic and financial assessments follow.
For an investor, the question therefore becomes:
Before asking how much an AAM investment could return, have we established whether that investment has a genuine reason to exist in the first place?
CATEM has also been developed to help provide an evidence-based answer to that question.
A Methodology Developed Through a Real-World Application
CATEM is currently undergoing its first large-scale territorial application, through which the methodology is being progressively developed, tested and refined.
The application allows the methodology to be examined across different territorial environments and mobility systems without beginning from a predetermined network configuration.
The analytical framework, assessment criteria, indicators and tools developed within CATEM are not being publicly disclosed at this stage.
The methodology has, however, been conceived so that it can be applied, with appropriate adaptations, to different territories, regions and countries.
CATEM for Investors, Operators and Governments
CATEM is available for preliminary discussions with investors, AAM operators, eVTOL operators, infrastructure developers, and national, regional and local governments interested in developing, assessing or potentially financing Advanced Air Mobility initiatives and networks.
This means that CATEM can be applied not only when a territory is considering the development of a new AAM network.
It may also be relevant when a project already exists and a potential investor, operator or public authority wants to better understand its territorial foundations before making a decision.
CATEM does not promise that an investment will succeed.
It is not designed to demonstrate that Advanced Air Mobility must necessarily be the solution.
It is designed to increase the knowledge on which the decision is made.
Three principles summarise its philosophy:
– Know before you decide.
– Understand before you design.
– Verify before you invest.
Investors, AAM operators, eVTOL operators, public authorities and organisations interested in learning more about CATEM — Cacelli AAM Territorial Evidence Matrix, or in discussing its potential application to a territory or an existing AAM project, may contact VERTIPORTS Enterprise Ltd for further information and an initial discussion.
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