VertiSite
A SaaS planning tool that ranks and optimizes vertiport locations and network density for any city, using a city-centric demand model tied to ticket price and accessibility scenarios.
Concept
VertiSite is a web-based decision-support platform for cities, real estate developers, and air-taxi operators planning Urban Air Mobility (UAM) infrastructure. It ingests a city's population, trip patterns, congestion data, and candidate sites, then runs a city-centric demand model to estimate UAM ridership, aircraft movements, and required vehicle fleet under varying ticket prices and vertiport densities. The output is an optimized vertiport placement map and a sensitivity dashboard showing how demand responds to price and network density — exactly the levers the research identifies as decisive. Operators use it for fleet sizing and long-term capital planning; municipalities use it to evaluate feasibility and zoning.
Why now
The city-centric forecasting methodology has been demonstrated across 990 cities, showing market potential in over 200 cities by 2050 and quantifying that low ticket prices and high vertiport density are the dominant demand drivers [0]. This converts an academic methodology into an actionable, repeatable planning workflow precisely when operators need to make siting and fleet decisions before commercial launch.
AI assessment
A focused planning SaaS for vertiport siting built directly on a validated 990-city UAM demand methodology, but the market is nascent, slow-moving, and dependent on an industry that hasn't commercially launched.
- Evidence strength 4/5
- The single cited paper is robust—covering 990 cities and explicitly identifying ticket price and vertiport density as decisive levers—but it is one source rather than multiple converging studies.
- Market pull 2/5
- The UAM/air-taxi market is pre-revenue and speculative, with the paper itself projecting viability only by 2050, so near-term spend on planning tools is thin and confined to a handful of operators.
- Novelty & moat 3/5
- Productizing a city-centric demand model into a siting optimizer is a reasonable translation, but location-optimization and transport-demand modeling are well-trodden, so the novelty is incremental.
- Feasibility 4/5
- The underlying methodology is published and the data inputs (population, trip patterns, congestion) are accessible, making a web dashboard technically buildable by a small team.
- Wedge clarity 3/5
- Tying directly to the price-and-density levers gives a clear entry point, but the named targets (Joby, Archer, Skyports) likely build proprietary in-house models, threatening defensibility.
- Simplicity / focus 4/5
- The product is sharply scoped to one clear job—rank and optimize vertiport locations—rather than an overstuffed platform, though it does straddle three buyer types.
Scored by AI against a fixed rubric (evidence, market, novelty, feasibility, wedge, simplicity). A prior estimate to compare ideas before real-world signal arrives.
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Who benefits
- Joby Aviationcompany
Identified as a potential customer for this idea.
- Archer Aviationcompany
Identified as a potential customer for this idea.
- Skyportscompany
Identified as a potential customer for this idea.
- Volocoptercompany
Identified as a potential customer for this idea.
- Liliumcompany
Identified as a potential customer for this idea.
Research it builds on
- A city-centric approach to estimate and evaluate global Urban Air Mobility demandLukas Asmer, Roman Jaksche, Henry Pak et al. · 2024 · 17 citationsAll ideas from this paper →
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