Proposals of Processes and Organizational Preventive Measures against Malfunctioning of Drones and User Negligence

Abstract

Drones have been included in more and more activities in various domains, such as military, commercial and personal use. The existing legislative framework insufficiently addresses the responsibility and preventive measures angles in case of vulnerability exploitation and negligence in drone usage. Such aspects can be addressed by the industry in technological processes and standardization. These are especially important aspects given the high impact that misuse of drones can have on individuals, property and buildings within the flight zone when the drone is misused. The aim of this research paper is to investigate how these elements are viewed in existing legislation and by individuals, while taking into account the technical specifics and the stakeholder ecosystem of drone usage. In this respect, we use a complex questionnaire which was sent to a final number of 233 respondents pertaining to firms specialized in IT, legal and cybersecurity. The responses have been analyzed from a qualitative and quantitative perspective. Our results highlight the areas of improvement in the existing standardization and find the followings: (1) stakeholders across the drone ecosystem are viewed as having a shared liability in certain use cases, (2) preventive measure implementation should be dispersed across the stakeholders of drone usage and (3) automation of prevention measures is considered more useful in case of malfunctioning or misuse of drones rather than user manual intervention. In addition, we make proposals to accommodate new policy requirements for the above use cases. The results of this research paper assist policy makers in improving existing standardization framework and technological processes concerning drone usage, but also stakeholders of the drone ecosystem in generating increased trust of the drone users. Further, this research paper can also assist drone software and hardware producers in calibrating their products to ensure trust of the users. In addition, trust in the use of drones for commercial and personal purposes is increased through standardization and proper approaches for situations that may cause damages to drones and to third parties.