EDA released its results on Risks Assessment for military UAS

EDA assessed all aspects of Apave Aeroservices technical proposal. In line with the Working Paper called “Harmonisation of a minimum set of information to be submitted with the request for permission to operate a foreign UAS on the territory of another EDA member state”, the purpose of EDA call for tender was to launch a study that will investigate a harmonised methodology to perform Air and Ground Risks Assessment for non-certified UAS operating in the specific category of operations.

The general objective of the study is to facilitate non-certified UAS operations in the Specific category of operations (called MIL-UAS-SPECIFIC) in foreign pMS (participating Member States) and to support EDA pMS in Risk Assessment methodology (identification, mitigation and tools) when no national methodology exists.

The call for tender expected the tenderers to provide comprehensive proposals able to address the following steps:

• SO1.    To perform an inventory of national Air and Ground Risk Assessment methods and tools and to capture EDA participating Member States’ expectations/end state in this domain
• SO2.    To study the UAS Risk Assessment tool/methodology developed from 2014 to 2018 in the UAS ARF WG, called RAT9, the upgrade of this RAT tool by Portugal, called A-RAT10, and any other relevant methodologies, such as SORA, the civilian recommended methodology in Europe
• SO3.    To study how the Military specificities like the payload of the UAS (e.g., dangerous goods, weapons) can influence the results of an Air and Ground Risk Assessment and see how consideration of such military specificities needs to be included in the tool/method for Air and Ground Risk Assessment in the MIL-UAS-SPECIFIC category of operation
• SO4.    To perform a gap analysis among existing methodologies studied and define/combine methodologies that are most adapted to the specific Military needs (for Ground risks and Air Risks assessment)
• SO5.    To develop and propose a methodology that encompasses most of the common and most important aspects identified by the pMS for the assessment of Ground and Air risks
• SO6.    To verify that this proposed methodology is as safe as the methodologies already in use by the Military. The study should develop proposals about the utilisation of the harmonised methodology by the EDA pMS, in line with the identified expectations, such as - indicatively but not exhaustively - standard scenarios/pre-defined risks assessments or online tool
• SO7.    To monitor, maintain and possibly update the development of the civilian and Military Risk Assessment tools and the methodology identified as per SO5 and verified as per SO6

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 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 fully committed to address the safety management and the exposure to risks of the growing markets of civil and military UAS operations.