32 Babetto, Laura Stumpf, Eike Dalla Vedova, Matteo Davide Lorenzo 415310 RWTH Aachen University Aachen English 1 Online-Ressource : Illustrationen Urban Air Mobility (UAM) refers to the use of aerial transportation within urban environment with the aim of reducing congestion and enhancing connectivity. Its safe deployment hinges on the convergence between public acceptance, technical feasibility, and regulatory compliance. Existing research addresses these domains separately, thus hindering the development and integration of UAM systems. This thesis addresses this gap by developing and applying a holistic, interdisciplinary approach that systematically combines: (1) a novel public acceptance model and survey, focusing on understudied mid-sized European cities; (2) a database-driven conceptual design methodology tailored to the variety of configurations of UAM vehicles; and (3) a hybrid quantitative safety assessment incorporating the Specific Operations Risk Assessment (SORA) framework with Bayesian Networks (BNs) within a Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) framework. First, the public acceptance study indicates a moderate inclination towards UAM adoption (62%) with safety emerging as the primary concern. A share of 74% of respondents expresses a preference for aviation-grade safety, quantified as a target failure rate of $10^{-9}$ failures per flight hour. Second, the conceptual design methodology utilizes a database of 280 UAM concepts to derive statistically robust design parameters and correction factors to address the limitations of traditional aircraft design methods. Employing this methodology provides the preliminary design of a heavy-lift cargo drone as a case study. Third, the hybrid safety assessment, integrating SORA and BNs, allowed for a quantitative evaluation of failure probabilities and the effectiveness of both technical and operational mitigations. The application of this assessment to the case study shows a six-order-of magnitude reduction in estimated system failure probability, achieving compliance with stringent aviation safety standards (from $10^{-5}$ to $10^{-11}$ failures per flight hour). Safety serves as the critical link between the three validated methodologies, thereby representing the driver of both acceptance and aircraft design. Hence, this thesis provides a practical (and replicable) approach that enables the development of safe, acceptable, and certifiable UAM systems from the early design stage. Veröffentlicht auf dem Publikationsserver der RWTH Aachen University ; Dissertation, Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen, 2025 ; 2, ; PUB:(DE-HGF)11, ; Dissertation / PhD Thesis Dissertation Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen 2025 2025 RWTH-2025-09256 2025 https://publications.rwth-aachen.de/record/1020820