Ground Risk Informed Operational Planning for Small Unmanned Aerial Systems
Increasing quantities of small Unmanned Aerial Systems (sUAS) operations present many challenges in terms of safe adoption and integration into existing airspace. The ability to study and quantify the risk to third parties on the ground prior to flight is an important step toward enabling Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operations. The Ground Risk Assessment Service Provider (GRASP) software is a capability developed by NASA to assist with third-party risk quantification and risk-informed flight planning. In this paper, two nominal flight paths intended to represent an infrastructure inspection mission are evaluated using the software to demonstrate its utility. A method is also introduced for adding other NASA-developed capabilities into a single architecture to assess a broader set of operational risks associated with BVLOS operations. These capabilities include a navigation system performance prediction tool, a high fidelity vehicle dynamics model, high resolution wind field data, and other information pertinent to operators. Data produced by these capabilities are combined to enable use of the Performance Based Navigation (PBN) concept borrowed from conventional aviation, providing quantified flight path uncertainty for where the sUAS is likely to be relative to its nominal flight plan. Ground risk is assessed within this region of uncertainty, giving a higher level of confidence in the solution compared to an analysis of only the nominal flight path.