Integration of U-space Safety Assessment Methodologies With Experimentation

In the coming years, there will be a significant increase in the use of Unmanned Aircraft Vehicles (UAVs), particularly drones, in urban environments, where safety due to the large number of drones operating is the primary concern. Therefore, the UAS traffic management (UTM) and its European implementation, U-space services, are being created to guarantee the safe operations of UAVs in large-scale scenarios. To ensure the target level of safety (TLS) in UAVs operation and U-space services, several safety assessment methodologies (e.g., SORA and MEDUSA) have been created. However, they tend to be predominantly qualitative. Consequently, a significant gap arises between the safety requirements and objectives established using these methods and the actual safety objectives in real-world scenarios. In this work, we argue that this gap can be filled by experimentation and a close articulation between existing analytical approaches and experimental methods.