GENERAL AVIATION Uncrewed aerial systems and regulation

Implementing UAS – the regulator’s viewpoint

DEWAR DONNITHORNE-TAIT FRAeS, from the RAeS UAS Group, reports on ICAO’s fourth uncrewed aircraft systems industry symposium.

Drone Research

Over five days in April (13-15 and 20-21 April) the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) held its DRONE ENABLE (DE4) virtual symposium which brought together stakeholders from industry, academia, government and international organisations in the uncrewed aviation sector come together to exchange best practices, lessons learned, research material and challenges related to the introduction of uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) and UAS traffic management (UTM). In addition to updates on ICAO’s progress with UAS and a focus on current UAS activities in Brazil, the main topics were:

• Interaction with key aviation and non-aviation stakeholders
• Uncrewed aircraft (UA) performance requirements in an uncrewed traffic management (UTM) environment
• UTM system certification requirements
• UTM development and deployment lessons learned
• UTM integration into aerodrome environments/activities
• Cyber resilience
• Advanced air mobility (AAM) and urban air mobility (UAM)
• Flight rules in an evolving environment

Policy catch-up with innovation

Dr Young Tae Kim, Secretary General, International Transport Forum, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), noted that the private sector is innovating ever faster. Such acceleration requires policy changes to deal with innovation in order to address tomorrow’s challenges today. Drones should be seen as part of the overall transport system and there was a need for policy assessment in the following areas: economics, public acceptance, environmental impact and infrastructure requirements. Drones may be used to fill gaps in existing systems and should not be viewed in isolation but play a complementary role. The aim was to assist access for all and provide new transport opportunities. It was important not to widen differences between rich and poor, as drones need to benefit all of civilisation.

Drones in action

Both the City/State of Hamburg and the Antwerp Port Authority described the special characteristics and requirements for extensive drone use over their local jurisdictions. In addition to legal frameworks, it was appropriate for the local authority to collaborate with the national civil aviation authority in authorising air operations. There were many potential drone applications but capacity was finite and limited by evolving regulatory, technical and operational factors. The Port of Antwerp, as part of the SAFIR Project, had established two drone trial zones, one for ‘fully autonomous drones’.

Drones should integrate with other airspace users safely and equitably, through outreach and consultation. Both pre-flight planning and operational situational awareness has to be fully shared between UAS and other airspace users and between air traffic management (ATM) and UTM with a step-wise approach being generally favoured. It was noted that the time taken to obtain a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) to permit emergency UAS operations varied widely between states – within Europe, in one state it could take 30 minutes while, in another, two days.

Performance requirements

It was agreed that the use of performance requirements, which were technology agnostic, was the best way forward but it was challenging. As things develop, ‘the best might be the enemy of the good’ and premature standards might stifle innovation. Equally, to overcome some of the initial challenges of performance requirement approaches, the use of prescriptive standards might be better for short term situations.

There appeared to be many visions of what UTM might be and how it might be approached. There was general agreement that standards and interoperability were required for three key systems components: communications, navigation and surveillance (CNS) and that the standards should be technology independent. Shared situational awareness was a central requirement and a local, relevant operational picture should be available to all airspace users, UTM and ATM, with safety margins to mitigate issues such as system latency. Progress had been made with methodologies to identify UTM airspace classes, UA navigation performance classes and error budgets.

Modes of operation

Still from a YouTube video showing drone surveillance operations in the Port of Antwerp. Port of AntwerpThere were several implementation models for UTM, ranging from a monolithic, centralised service delivered by an authority to a fully federated approach with many service providers, each of which were ‘qualified’ or ‘certified’ to levels appropriate to the nature of the services provided. It was noted that there was a need, in certain critical areas, to have a ‘single version of the truth’ as a basis for safe navigation. There were different approaches to ‘certification’, including ‘self-declaration’, ‘regulator-delegated’ and ‘regulator-approved’. A new approach could involve a ‘designated industry body’ (DIB) and some precedents existed.

Safety assurance

Because UTM is likely to be highly automated and will provide safety-critical service to both UAS and other airspace users, safety assurance measures are needed which have not been implemented with existing ATM. This represents a significant change. While current developments towards UTM are somewhat in isolation of existing ATM, there is a recognition that there has to be an initial high degree of information sharing and co-operation followed, in the longer term, by substantial integration. The move towards more ‘data-driven’ ATM is likely to improve the convergence of the two. Several speakers described work on the use of cloud computing, architectures, verification, authorisation, design assurance levels and the use of simulation. One aim was to deliver a fully integrated air traffic control officer (ATCO) interface, which could be tailored for each operational segment and avoided ‘over-informing’ an ATCO.