Ground Risk Assessment for Unmanned Aircraft Focusing on Multiple Risk Sources in Urban Environments

Abstract

This paper investigates the risk quantification for Unmanned Aircraft (UA) in urban environments, focusing on the safety of ground people. An assessment methodology is proposed to quantify the flying risk, which indicates the ground fatalities resulted from different potential risk sources. With the knowledge of UA’s specifications and ground environments, the flying risk of the target UA flying in the target area could be evaluated from the combination of results from independent assessment procedures focusing on multiple potential risk sources with specific safety metrics. A study case to assess the flying risk of the Talon and the DJI Inspire 2 flying in one piece of the region in Chengdu is presented. From the assessment result, the airspace management strategies for both Talon and DJI Inspires 2 could be easily developed to guarantee the safety of ground people, therefore, this risk quantification method could be a general tool to support decision-making in safety work.