[Peetwo]

DW1 update: 21 Sept '17-

CASA extend period for accepting review submissions, via Oz Aviation:

CASA extends deadline for submissions to drone review
September 20, 2017 by australianaviation.com.au

Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) given interested parties another week to get their submissions in to its review into commercial and recreational operations of remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS), or drones.

The deadline for public comment to its discussion paper has been pushed back to Friday, September 29, CASA said in a statement on its website. It was previously September 22.
“In response to requests from the aviation community, we’ve extended the deadline for feedback on our drone safety review discussion paper,” CASA said on Wednesday.

CASA opened submissions for its review into commercial and recreational operations of remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS), or drones in August, following the terms of reference being set out in June.

In a discussion paper, CASA noted there were about 50,000 drones used in Australia currently, mostly for sport and recreational purposes.

Further, it said the RPA sector had achieved enormous growth globally in recent times, as advancements in drone technology lifted commercial and recreational consumer demand and the cost of these aircraft continued to come down.

Along with other aviation regulators around the world, CASA said it too faced the task of maintaining high levels of safety without “unduly constraining commercial opportunities to use a technology capable of a multitude of beneficial humanitarian, economic and recreational applications”.

The terms of reference for the review showed CASA would consider among other matters the safety benefits and cost effectiveness of introducing mandatory registration, education and training for all RPAS operators, as well as the deployment of geofencing capabilities for these aircraft.

The review also aimed to look at the “effectiveness of CASA’s operating model with respect to the regulation of RPAS” amid what is a growing industry.

The discussion paper can be read in full on the CASA website.

CASA’s review is separate to Federal Parliament’s look at the rules around the use of drones, which is being conducted by the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Committee.

The aviation safety regulator published a video on its “Can I Fly There?” app that was launched in May 2017 on its YouTube channel.

Next via insurancelawtomorrow.com :

Game of Drones – what does the rise of the drone mean for insurers?
By Jodie Odell on September 18, 2017 Posted in Industry news

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), remotely piloted aircraft (RPAs) or drones – however you choose to refer to them, are big business. They’re being used increasingly in the commercial world – from mining and agriculture, to tourism, sports and entertainment. But that’s not all.

Your ten year old niece or nephew probably has one which they operate with gusto, while family members glance nervously skywards. Going to a wedding? Chances are a drone will be overhead filming, so the happy couple can spend the first few weeks of married life editing the footage into a jaunty video. And then there are the unbridled aviation enthusiasts for whom a drone is simply the latest must have in their aeronautical armoury.

So, we know that drones are out there but with so many different types of use and user, how are they regulated? What are the liability risks? And how can insurers meet these?

The regulation

Australia has been at the forefront of drone regulation worldwide. In 2002, we became the first country to regulate the use of drones. And in September 2016, new regulations came into effect so that certain drones can be operated without licences. This allows businesses to use drones in their everyday operations on their own property, without costly and time consuming certifications.

People and organisations wanting to fly recreational or commercial drones with a maximum take-off weight of less than 2kg no longer need to apply for a certificate and licence from the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA). This avoids about $1400 in regulatory fees, as well as the need to develop manuals and other documentation. There are, however, restrictions such as only flying during the day and in line of sight, and no flying over populous areas such as beaches, parks and sporting ovals. So, take your niece or nephew to an empty airfield and not the local park.

A drone with a gross weight of at least 2kg but less than 25kg can also be operated without a remote pilot licence or an RPA operator’s certificate, where no remuneration is received for its use.  Again, there are caveats. A medium drone (at least 25kg but not over 150kg) may be operated in the same circumstances although the operator must hold a remote pilot’s licence.

A risky business

While less red tape creates an exciting opportunity for businesses to exploit drone technology and explore its uses, some are not aware of the strict legal and regulatory implications if something goes awry. The risk remains considerable, even for small drones, and the heavier the drone the greater the potential liability.

More obvious risks include flying into power lines, or crashing and damaging property or people.  However, flying drones can raise issues in many areas of law including cyber-security, crime, product liability, employee safety, trespass and privacy.  We are just starting to appreciate the implications of some of these. For example:

• the connection between the pilot on the ground and the drone in the air relies on hardware and software which are vulnerable to cyber-threats. Flight controls can be hacked to hijack or infect a drone remotely. This could cause devastating consequences in terms of damage to drones, people and property as well as business interruption for the drone operator;
  
• the intersection of privacy law and drone operations is new and not fully tested. Privacy laws generally prohibit the collection and use of personal information without a person’s consent. If a drone will capture images with a camera, then circumstances may arise where a third party will claim a breach of privacy on the basis that unlawful surveillance is being conducted; and
  
• flying a drone over another person’s property without permission may constitute a trespass.
  

Each of these risks, and more, needs to be managed by any business looking to use drones.

Insure my drone

As is typical with new, fast moving technologies, with myriad risks also comes opportunity. For insurers, this not only includes the use of drones in their own businesses to drive efficiencies (for example, using drones to provide early surveillance footage after a natural disaster to expedite claims management), but also diversification of their portfolios to provide products designed to help businesses manage drone related risks.

In addition to insurers expanding existing public liability policies to include drone use in normal business activities, specific third party liability and drone hull policies are now available. While this has arguably met the immediate and most obvious risks associated with private, and relatively modest, commercial drone operation, the use of commercial drones will almost certainly continue its upward trajectory.

The demand for more and increasingly sophisticated and varied insurance products will surely follow. As they gain a greater understanding of the many potential liabilities facing drone operators, insurers will be well positioned to make the most of this developing technology.

Finally from science boffin publication PHYS.ORG on a research project by New Virginia Tech, that looks at the risks involved with human v drone impacts...

Study suggests risks vary widely in drone-human impacts
September 19, 2017


Researchers collect drone impact data at an athletics facility on Virginia Tech's Blacksburg campus under the direction of the Virginia Tech Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership and the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science. Credit: Virginia Tech

New Virginia Tech research suggests there's wide variation in the risk that unmanned aircraft pose to people on the ground.

Many of the most promising applications for these aircraft—including package delivery, public safety, and traffic management—entail flights over people and raise the possibility, however unlikely, of an impact between the aircraft and a human.

So before unmanned aircraft systems—also known as UAS or drones—can be utilized efficiently by the many industries eager to employ them, policymakers need to understand what injuries these aircraft could potentially cause and what design features, operational limitations, and regulations could help prevent them.

Without robust experimental data on these topics, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations currently prohibit UAS operations over people. (Operators can apply for a waiver, but the FAA has granted only three, all extremely limited in scope.)

Virginia Tech's world-renowned injury biomechanics group and its FAA-approved UAS test site teamed up to fill that gap and have just released the first peer-reviewed academic study to offer quantitative data on injury risk associated with potential drone-human collisions.

The research, published in the Annals of Biomedical Engineering, assessed head and neck injury risk from three small commercially available aircraft in a variety of impact scenarios. It represents a critical step toward developing UAS safety standards that can minimize the risk of catastrophic or fatal injury from operations over people.

The injury biomechanics team is led by Steven Rowson, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering and mechanics in the College of Engineering, and Stefan Duma, the Harry Wyatt Professor of Engineering and interim director of the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science.

The group's wide-ranging experience evaluating injury risk includes extensive work in the automotive and sports industries—both areas in which evidence-based safety standards have been effective at reducing catastrophic and fatal injuries.

The Virginia Tech Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership, which runs the UAS test site, helped design and conduct the experiments.

The team used three commercially available aircraft, with masses ranging from 1.2 kilograms to 11 kilograms; the aircraft impacted a test dummy whose head and neck contained sensors to measure acceleration and force.

In one set of tests, the aircraft were flown into the dummy at full speed; in another, aircraft were dropped directly onto the dummy's head in different orientations.

The forces produced by these impacts were evaluated relative to standard benchmarks for forces likely to cause potentially severe or life-threatening injuries—skull fractures, for example.

In general, the injury risk increased with aircraft mass. For example, in drop tests with the smallest drone, the risk of severe neck injury was less than 10 percent; for the largest aircraft, the median risk rose to 70 percent.

These results suggest that a subset of small drones may already be safe to operate over people. Other aircraft, however, present significant injury risk, even those well within mass and speed limits outlined in the FAA's Part 107 guidelines for commercial operations by small UAS.

The data also shows that despite greater impact speeds in the live flight tests, the drop tests—which facilitated more direct contact between the aircraft center of mass and the dummy's head—tended to result in more severe hits. That reflects a common thread in the numbers: The nature of the impact had a significant influence on the resulting injury probability.

"There's a wide range of risk," Rowson said. "In some instances it was low, and in some instances it was high, and there are lessons we can take away from that to reduce injury risk in a deliberate way through product design."

During impacts in which the aircraft was deflected away from the body—by a protruding rotor arm, for example—the force and resulting injury risk were reduced. Aircraft features specifically designed to redirect its center of mass in the event of an impact could make severe injuries less likely.

The data showed that injury risk was also reduced when the aircraft deformed upon impact or when pieces broke off. Those deformations and fractures absorb some of the energy of the crash and offer another route for risk mitigation.

"If you reduce the energy that's able to be transferred to be head, you reduce the injury risk," said Eamon Campolettano, a doctoral student from Hicksville, New York, and the paper's first author. "The overarching goal for manufacturers should be to limit energy transfer."

The fact that some of the trials in the study yielded risk values greater than 50 percent highlights the potential for UAS-human impacts to lead to severe injuries. The significant variation in the data points to the need for comprehensive testing, especially considering the range of shapes, sizes, and materials in the commercial UAS market.

"What happens when the arm strikes first, or the center of mass?" asked Campolettano.

"What we set out to do with this study was to explore some of the many different ways drones and people can interact, and then use that baseline to choose different impact orientations for future studies."

The team is using these initial results to guide the development of a broader set of controlled experiments in a laboratory environment, which will represent a necessary foundation for future regulations on UAS operations over people.

"There's a tremendous demand for more research in this area," said Mark Blanks, the director of the Virginia Tech Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership. "The first step was to establish a baseline for how to perform these tests. Now we're doing a lot of work with individual companies, looking at specific airframes and potential mitigations."

"The big question right now is, what is the acceptable level of safety?" said Blanks, who also chairs an industry standards subcommittee developing recommendations for safe operations over people. "How much proof does the FAA need before they say, 'Yes, that's okay'? Once those standards are in place, we're going to see huge expansion in the industry."

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-09-vary-widel...s.html#jCp 

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