Modeling Mitigations and Hazards in UAS Emergency Response Operations

Emerging aviation includes the use of small Unmanned Aerial Systems (sUAS) in novel operations. Emergency response operations, such as those conducted by fire departments, offer both mission success opportunities and safety challenges in the introduction of sUAS. Yet, operations are not as regulated nor as standardized across agencies, which could benefit from operational lessons learned in novel life-threatening situations. Furthermore, a lack of standardized procedures makes it difficult to assess and prevent reoccurrence of incidents, which are spread in different incident databases.

In this work, we use Model Based Systems Engineering to consolidate safety procedure analysis and thematic synthesis in sUAS incident response. Specifically, we perform a gap analysis to identify which safety procedures on pre-flight, in-flight and post-flight are more vulnerable to recurrent sUAS incident themes. This analysis may help lead to routine checklists that standardize safety analysis and more routine operations.