Evaluating the impact of air corridors on the environment and public interests

As a typical paradigm of unmanned aircraft system traffic management (UTM), air corridors are vital for ensuring the operation of logistics unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in urban low-altitude airspace. However, the impact of air corridors on the environment and public interests remains underexplored. Therefore, this study incorporates concepts such as carbon emission costs, economic costs, and public interest considerations into the air corridor structural optimization model, while introducing geofencing constraints. The model attempts to minimize the impact of air corridors on public interests, including explicit calculation of ground risk and noise pollution. Additionally, a heuristic framework is developed to address the proposed formulaic model. Finally, this study evaluated the influence of key parameters on the geometric structure design of air corridors. The results show the impact of the height and step size of air corridors on carbon emissions, ground risk, noise emissions, and economic metrics.