Developing 3D Virtual Safety Risk Terrain for UAS Operations in Complex Urban Environments

TL;DR

This paper introduces a 3D virtual risk terrain concept for UAS in urban environments, transforming societal risk constraints into exclusion zones to enhance safety and facilitate risk-aware operations planning.

Contribution

It proposes a novel 3D risk terrain framework that integrates existing risk models, enabling safer UAS operations in complex urban settings.

Findings

Risk terrains modeled on Chicago downtown show distinct characteristics under different conditions.

The 3D virtual risk terrain effectively visualizes societal risk constraints for UAS planning.

Potential to extend the concept to other societal impacts like noise and privacy.

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), an integral part of the Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) vision, are capable of performing a wide spectrum of tasks in urban environments. The societal integration of UAS is a pivotal challenge, as these systems must operate harmoniously within the constraints imposed by regulations and societal concerns. In complex urban environments, UAS safety has been a perennial obstacle to their large-scale deployment. To mitigate UAS safety risk and facilitate risk-aware UAS operations planning, we propose a novel concept called \textit{3D virtual risk terrain}. This concept converts public risk constraints in an urban environment into 3D exclusion zones that UAS operations should avoid to adequately reduce risk to Entities of Value (EoV). To implement the 3D virtual risk terrain, we develop a conditional probability framework that comprehensively integrates most existing basic models for UAS ground risk. To demonstrate the concept, we build risk terrains on a Chicago downtown model and observe their characteristics under different conditions. We believe that the 3D virtual risk terrain has the potential to become a new routine tool for risk-aware UAS operations planning, urban airspace management, and policy development. The same idea can also be extended to other forms of societal impacts, such as noise, privacy, and perceived risk.