Risk Assessment Of Unmanned Air Systems (Uas) In The National Aerospace System (Nas)

• Activity Number: 76
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Sunday, July 31, 2011 : 4:00 PM to 5:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Risk Analysis
• Author(s): Joe Chaffee*+ and Mark Carpenter and Roy Hartfield and Wesley Randall
• Companies: Auburn University and Auburn University and Auburn University and Auburn University
• Keywords: risk analysis ; mixture modeling ; Poisson regression ; text analytics

Abstract

The ability to predict and, subsequently, mitigate unmanned air systems (UAS) or remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) loss of control and safety related incidences is a prerequisite mandated by the FAA before UAS can be integrated into the national aerospace system (NAS). In this paper, we put forth a risk assessment program for military UAS integration into the NAS, based on military historical safety data for several UAS models, publically available commercial manned aircraft incident data and publically available UAS incident reports. We provide our analytical approach for(based upon archival data, reliability projections, and statistical simulation) predicting UAS behavior, with particular emphasis on the impact of "new" systems entering the existing "safe" system, i.e., the NAS. The overall modeling approach involves discrete event prediction over time, with Bayesian, mixture modeling and simulation components. Text analytics were used to organize, categorize and analyze the unstructured incident reports.