Abstract
ABSTRACTThe academic literature of late is rich with examples of lightweight drones being used to capture data to support scientific research. Drone science is a blossoming field, but alongside a long-standing public concern about drone safety, the research community and our collaborators are increasingly calling for a ‘code of best practice’ for researchers who fly drones (no matter how small). Researchers who have long enjoyed the freedom of operating separately from ‘hobbyist’ and ‘commercial’ operators are now finding that their institutions and collaborators are demanding evidence of operational competence. In the UK, such competence can be formally accredited by obtaining a UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) ‘permission for aerial work’ (PfAW). Part of this process requires that the operators produce an ‘operations manual’ (OM) – a lengthy document explaining protocols for safe drone deployment, alongside maintenance and flight records. This article provides the frontispiece to an OM produced as part of a successful PfAW accreditation process. We share our OM, which is available as supplemental material to this article, in the spirit of research as a collaborative endeavour, with the aim that it will assist others facing the same stringent checks as ourselves, whilst also serving as a guide to safe flying that can be adapted and adopted by others.
Highlights
Lightweight drones, widely used in environmental science research, are variously referred to as unmanned or unpiloted aerial vehicles (UAVs) or systems (UASs) or remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS)
The purpose of this intentionally short manuscript is to provide an introduction to the operations manual’ (OM) that we produced as part of that accreditation process, and which was formally approved by the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in August 2016
In the UK, whilst some researchers have obtained CAA permission (CAA 2015a, 2015c) for RPAS operations (e.g. Pomeroy, O’Connor, and Davies 2015; Woodget et al 2015, 2016), others have operated their RPAS under the existing authorizations granted to hobbyist users (CAA 2013) which permit researchers to carry out flights in uncongested areas so long as permission from relevant landowners is first obtained (DeBell et al 2015; e.g. Puttock et al 2015, 2017; Carbonneau and Dietrich 2016; Anderson et al 2016)
Summary
Lightweight drones, widely used in environmental science research, are variously referred to as unmanned or unpiloted aerial vehicles (UAVs) or systems (UASs) or remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS). There are a plethora of scientific projects utilizing lightweight drones as data collection platforms, servicing a diverse range of civilian, scientific, and remote-sensing applications Recent examples of such drone use in ecology include surveys of: marine. Note that academic drone operators should not normally require PfAW to fly within uncongested areas in the UK (see Section 2), but they do require the landowner’s permission to fly The purpose of this intentionally short manuscript is to provide an introduction to the OM that we produced as part of that accreditation process, and which was formally approved by the UK CAA in August 2016. In what follows in the article, we provide a basic background to airspace regulations, scientific research and permission to fly drones, and the UK procedure for obtaining PfAW, so that readers of this article can understand the framework within which the shared OM sits
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