The New Specific Operations Risk Assessment Approach for UAS Regulation Compared to Common Civil Aviation Risk Assessment

Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) of all shapes and scales are enjoying increasing popularity. An UAS’ purpose and scale can reach from very small toys up to large systems the size of common civil aircraft and able to transport several tons of payload or even passengers. In recent years, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) began to develop a regulatory framework for all kinds of UAS. In traditional civil aircraft, critical failures pose a high risk for humans such as pilots, cabin crew or passengers. For UAS, the potential risk of fatalities and damage to critical infrastructure depends on the actual operation in combination with the operational environment. Therefore, the focus of the regulation can be changed from an aircraft centric risk assessment towards an operation centric risk assessment. Throughout this paper, an overview of the latest regulatory developments in the UAS category is given. Furthermore, the paper describes and discusses the similarities and differences between a common civil aviation qualitative risk assessment and the new Specific categories operation centric risk assessment approach by the EASA