Modeling Public Concerns for Unmanned Aerial System Operations in the National Airspace System

Abstract

The Unites States commercial unmanned aerial system (UAS) market was valued at $99.6 million in 2020 and is projected to reach $3.7 billion by 2030. Applications for these commercial UAS range from risk mitigation and surveillance to package delivery. Coupled with these emerging applications are the unique factors that arise with a commercial UAS’s compact size and low-altitude flights among the civilian populace. In this work, a value model was created to attempt to aid in determining the infringement of a UAS operation configuration on a civilian environment. Value functions were developed in an additive model that measures infringement (a UAS’s encroachment or trespass on a right or privilege of a civilian) based on these attributes. The resulting value model was tested by running 100,000 random simulations. Analysis of the simulation results and sensitivity analysis of the model showed that fleet size, proximity, duration of the operation within a certain proximity, and total operation duration were the attributes that drove a UAS operation’s infringement on an environment. A use case of an Amazon delivery application was then examined. This is a realistic scenario simulated to study if duration of an operation and time near a structure are kept to a minimum, the infringement of an operation remained low. This study provides initial determination of how infringement of UAS can be quantified and what infringement values may look like for different operational scenarios.