Investigation of the effectiveness of mitigating actions for integration of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in G (Uncontrolled) Air Space

Since the beginning of the 21st century, the use of aerial drones has been in an increasing trend. EASA issued a policy statement on the airworthiness requirements of the UAS in 2009 to deal with the growing number of UAS in civil applications. In 2015, European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) introduced three new UAS categories that were included in a new regulatory framework. In 2019, two main documents were prepared and presented to the service of operators. In this context, drones are categorized according to their abilities and have brought appropriate obligations to each category as ?open, specific and certified?. In the specific category most used among the Open and Certified categories and falling under the scope of the project, the most important issue raised was the conduct of a risk assessment in order to get authorization from the competent authority. Permission for UAS operations in the Specific category is granted based on a Specific Operations Risk Assessment (SORA). The risk assessment categorizes operations into Specific Assurance and Integrity Levels (SAILs), which determines the level of the requirements for the operation. The main topic for this PhD is to examine the safety level of the SORA methodology.

As Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) are integrated into the airpsace among manned aviation for industrial use, the safety of operations is a key aspect. The main topic for this PhD is to examine the safety level of the SORA methodology of which principles are determined by the Joint Authorities for Rulemaking on Unmanned Systems (JARUS) group, with different theoretical methods and flight tests to be conducted at practically different flight geographies. The project will also reveal the prototype of ‘Specific Integrity and Assurance’ parameters and ‘mitigations’ procedures for Ground and Air Risk Classes where potentially SORA is likely to be insufficient, by dwell on the causality of the biases of the aviation authorities and all operators towards to the SORA methodology. This PhD project is a collaboration between University of Stavanger (UiS) and KVS Technologies and aim to investigate the effectiveness of the SORA methodology developed for Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems.