EASA announced selected bidder on UAS Standards

An enormous amount of industry standards has been developed for the unmanned aviation sector. There is a need to assess these standards against the European regulatory provisions, and determine which of those standards can be recommended to be used as acceptable means of compliance.

The call for tender launched by EASA in frame of Horizon Europe Work Programme 2021-2022 (Cluster 5 Climate, Energy and Mobility), proposed a budget of 350K Euros over 24 months to analyse over 150 standards in all aviation domains: Airworthiness, Operations, Oversight, Training, Environmental protection, U-Space, Aerodromes, development of industry standards.

About half of these standards have already been analysed by AW-Drones in frame of EU H2020 Research & Innovation program, focusing on the assessment of standards against the Specific Operations Risk Assessment (SORA) methodology and the (expected) U-Space regulation. The next step shall now be to extend the existing assessment of industry standards by assessing these also against the active European UAS regulations, and in particular EU Regulations 2019/945, 2019/947, 2021/664, 2021/665, 2021/666.

The EASA project is now expecting to include the following main outcomes:

• For each of the provisions in the European Union (EU) regulations, a list of standards recommended as means of compliance, even if partially compliant
• Update the Rolling Development Plan (U-RDP) of the European UAS Standards Coordination Group (EUSCG) with the results of the assessment
• Based on the outcome of the analysis, EASA may
• Issue, in 2023 and 2024, NPAs to amend the Acceptable Means of Compliance/Means of Compliance and Guidance Material to the UAS, the SC Light UAS, and the U-space Regulations.
• Propose to the standardisation bodies issuing the standard(s) to complement it (them), in case of not fully compliant standards
• Propose to the EUSCG to publish an updated version of the U-RDP

 

Over the years, Apave Aeroservices and OSAC have designed, tested and implemented state-of-the-art risk assessment methodologies to continuously improve the services they provide to key aviation stakeholders, civil and military authorities as well as defence companies. This has been applied to fixed, rotary wing and unmanned aircraft systems (UAS).
Witnessing the growing use of UAS in civil and military operations, Apave decided in 2015 to work on a UAS specific risk assessment methodology called Certidrones®, which was selected by civil and military UAV operators in Europe. Apave remains committed to address the safety management and the exposure to risks of the growing markets of civil and military UAS operations.