Since their massive military use in Afghanistan and Iraq, drone operations are expanding in scientific use and in civil use by private individuals who want the civil sky traffic to be open to a large variety of applications. This occurs...
moreSince their massive military use in Afghanistan and Iraq, drone operations are expanding in scientific use and in civil use by private individuals who want the civil sky traffic to be open to a large variety of applications. This occurs in a situation with a patchwork of national regulatory frameworks which need further differentiation and legitimation especially from the safety perspective, since no public database recording drone crashes is publically available, in order to facilitate the decision making process by providing objective data for the public and the stakeholders. Nevertheless, estimations mainly limited to recently declassified military drones data, have revealed thousands of crashes around the world since 2001. Since the outbreak of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, military drones have malfunctioned in many ways, crashing to earth because of mechanical breakdowns, human error, bad weather, loss of communication and other reasons. Military drones slammed into homes, farms, runways, highways, waterways and in one case, into an Air Force C-130 Hercules transport plane. Commercial drone flights are said to become a widespread reality, therefore the comparison with the safety of manned jet aircraft need to be established by facts. New potential mapping and cartographic needs will emerge from this new sky opening. Unidentified civil drones have flown above nuclear power plants in France and Belgium and a drone crashed in the middle of a street in Geneva Switzerland, raising public debate about safety issues and protection of privacy. The controversial collection and treatment of metadata by drones is also discussed, together with their involvement inside the new strategy of control of the global commons. The paper will conclude by pointing out that without a critical debate among stakeholders and the public on the lack of the necessary regulatory framework in the civil/public domains, no proper risk management strategies can be developed for introducing drones into civil airspace, also if recently the European aviation safety agency (EASA) starts to study the subject. Even though no serious fatal drone accident was recorded, many catastrophes have been narrowly averted, opening the debate of public perception of the introduction of a new technology. Keywords. drone crash, UAV and UAS accident, aircraft accidents probability, aircraft accident damage, probabilistic risk analysis, opening NAS to UAS, risk management strategy, public perception, patterns of life, global commons.
