The European Union funded AW-Drones for it to support the ongoing EU drone regulatory and standardisation process. In order to do so, the AW-Drones project is collecting existing technical standards, rules and procedures for the commercial use of drones worldwide. Then, it is critically assessing their compliance to existing and foreseen regulations. AW-Drones presents this information to EASA, the National CAAs, and standardization bodies with an yearly state-of-the-art report.
The report presents a structured overview of the standards published and under development. Its main objective is to increase awareness of the current global drones’ rulemaking and standardization state-of-the-art. As a result, it fosters the identification of best practices, gaps and bottlenecks for the safe use of civilian drones.

In order to present to the broader drones community the accomplishments reached up to this point, AW-Drones held its 2nd public event on the 5th of November 2020.

Objectives

Primarily, the objective of the webinar has been to present stakeholders with the identification and mapping between relevant standards and U-Space regulatory requirements, so that they could understand priorities and needs for its implementation in Europe. In addition, the webinar provided participants the chance to ask questions and share their views with the project team, Standard Design Organizations experts, and officers from the European Commission and EUROCONTROL.

Highlights

Damiano Taurino (Deep Blue), AW-Drones Coordinator, introduced the webinar. Then, Project Officer Vladimir Cid-Bourié (INEA) welcomed the guests. Next, Marco Ducci (Deep Blue), AW-Drones Deputy Coordinator, provided an overview of the project, highlighting in particular the need for a set of recommended industry standards to allow operators to comply with regulatory requirements.
Nicolas Eertmans (EC, DG Move) described the EU regulatory framework for U-Space, outlining the relation between UAS operators, U-Space Service Providers (USSP), and Air Traffic Service Providers (ATSP). After that, Andrew Hately (Eurocontrol) provided the perspective of R&D on U-Space, expanding on CORUS’s Concept of Operations for European UTM systems. Later, Christian Schleifer (EUSCG) took the floor to illustrate U-Space standardization activities, illustrating the relation between authorities and Standard Development Organisations (SDOs).

Two presentations from the point of view of the project followed. Firstly, Andres Van Swalm (Unifly) illustrated the AW-Drones assessment of U-Space standards, explaining the relationship between Common Information Services (CIS) and USSP, and presenting the set of U-Space services that were analysed within the project. Secondly, Peter van Blyenburgh (Blyenburgh & Co) showed results from the survey conducted on behalf of AW-Drones about the operator’s perspective of SORA, expanding on the current and near-future situation for multiple market sectors in the European UAS industry.

Overall, more than 200 people from different backgrounds (including industry, academia, and ANSPs) took part in the webinar. Participants connected from 37 Countries from all around the world.

Presentations from the 2nd AW-Drones webinar

Supporting materials