Abstract
The application of electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft to emergency medical services (EMS) is progressing with the expectations of physicians. The study of business and stakeholder needs has been limited to verbal discussions without much visualization or deepening through modeling. This limitation is due to the situation that people discussing in existing consortia have some knowledge about eVTOLs and/or EMS and share some images. Accordingly, they have been able to discuss verbally to some extent. This study aims to propose a reference model to visualize and deepen discussions through modeling to define needs and requirements for EMS eVTOLs, for use by both existing relevant people and new people from different industries who are to form a regional committee and deepen discussions. This study proposes a reference model that represents multiple views (“concept,” “process,” and “architecture”) in diagrams, in contrast to conventional studies and methods that hardly focused on deepening through modeling in the discussion of defining needs and requirements for EMS eVTOLs due to the different purposes from this study. As for the evaluation method, by using the modeled results in the online discussions, the authors check each participant whether they have any differences in recognition in the discussions and what the differences are. The results suggest that the reference model combining the three diagrams is effective in deepening the discussions. Future work includes 1) developing a reference model that takes into account the level of automation of aircraft and EMS operations as well as the roles and responsibilities assumed at that level, 2) applying the method to the discussion of a specific regional committee to validate its effectiveness, and 3) development of a modeling support method.
