A regulatory-based approach to safety analysis of unmanned aircraft systems

Abstract

Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), the new frontier in civil aviation, add another dimension to the ever-increasing complexity of the current National Airspace System (NAS) in the United States. The future inclusion of private and commercial operations of the UAS into the NAS, unavoidably, raises safety concerns. As the NAS becomes increasingly more complex and constrained, the associated hazard and safety risk modeling must also mature in sophistication. Thus, there is a need for advanced studies focusing on risk-based system safety analysis of emergent UAS operations. This paper presents a regulatory-based integrated approach to system safety and risk analysis of the UAS operations and their interaction with the current NAS and the future Next Generation (NextGen) Airspace. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.