ISCF Future Flight Research Director 2021

Our future aviation systems are undergoing a pivotal moment with novel and innovative new developments taking place in many different fields. The Future Flight Challenge is increasing our awareness of the growing opportunities and potential benefits (including environmental and economic) offered by such technologies.
However, there are a number of social questions we need to answer in order to transition these future flight technologies from innovation to implementation and adoption. These future aviation systems and technologies have the potential to engender significant transformational changes within our day-to-day lives, including potential changes not only to the way we travel, but also how we live, how we work, our consumer habits, our healthcare provision, and our urban/rural environments.
The Future Flight Challenge therefore encompasses a complex range of issues that cut across many sectors, a diverse range of stakeholders and a range of disciplinary research interests. This presents a huge challenge from a technological and implementation perspective including the development of new autonomous systems, aviation fuel sources, sensors and communication systems, ground infrastructure, traffic and flight management systems and regulatory frameworks. However, the hidden dimension to this Challenge is how individuals, groups of users/non-users, stakeholders within the innovation ecosystem and wider publics react, respond and ultimately adopt or reject these new technologies and forms of aviation.
This also then provides us with a significant, but exciting, challenge from an economic and social research perspective. A systematic multi-disciplinary based approach to understanding the social and cultural contexts, contingencies and implications of future flight is therefore required. Wide scale adoption of Future Flight technologies will hinge in no small part on the perceptions of trustworthiness and of potential positive social benefits outweighing the perceived negative social or environmental impacts at an individual, organisational, community or social level.
This diverse range of organisational stakeholders, publics and policy makers, may not yet be fully aware of the benefits and implications of Future Flight technologies and a lack of confidence or trust in these technologies could not only have significant impacts on eventual adoption, but also on further commercial or public sector investment in their development. It is crucial then that the positive and negative perceptions and social desirability of Future Flight can be better understood and engaged with at an early stage. Core focuses of this research include:
- Awareness: understanding of new technologies both within a broader innovation ecosystem and in public space, including representations and narratives in popular culture and the public sphere.
- Behaviours: organisational, group and individual behaviours, attitudes or human factors in terms of implementation or adoption within the innovation ecosystem or public sphere.
- Trustworthiness: perceptions of new technologies, their potential application and the organisational or regulatory frameworks within which they are being implemented within the innovation ecosystem or public sphere.
- Social Desirability: political, commercial and user/non-user readiness for new technologies and perceived potential for positive or negative social, environmental and economic implications or impacts.
Our primary aim will be to build longer-term relationships and spaces for engagement between economic and social researchers/research communities, companies/organisations in the aviation sectors and a diverse range of stakeholders across academia, business, industry and the wider public.