A drone Geographical Zone means a portion of airspace established by the Authority that facilitates, restricts or excludes drone operations. This is done in order to address risks pertaining to safety, privacy, protection of personal data, security or the environment, arising from drone operations.
Therefore, after the competent authority of the member state risk assesses a particular portion of airspace, it may choose to facilitate, restrict or exclude drone operations from that zone.
It could, for example, remove restrictions for use of the drone in a particular zone for leisure, or else it could exclude drone operations from a zone close to a major cultural landmark.
We now define the areas which are in close proximity to our drone operations.
A Controlled Ground Area is a ground area where the drone is operated and where only involved people are present. Remember, involved people are people who have given explicit consent to the drone operator to be part of the operation, or that have received clear instructions and safety precautions to follow if the drone behaves erratically.
The Flight Geography is the volume, or volumes, of airspace defined spatially and temporally in which the drone operator plans to conduct the operation.
It is important, therefore, not only to note the use of the word spatially, which implies the use of a particular section of airspace, but also the word temporally – meaning at a particular point in time.
You can then project the Flight Geography onto the surface of the earth, to obtain the Flight Geography Area.
There are instances where the drone may not operate as intended, which is why we need contingency procedures. In other words, what will the drone pilot do should the drone behave erratically? We will briefly mention, later on in the course, Standard Scenarios, which are scenarios which have been created to help the Operator in higher risk operations.
Because of this, EASA defines a Contingency Volume, which is the volume of airspace outside of the flight geography where contingency procedures (for Standard Scenarios) are applied.
Again, projecting the Contingency Volume to the surface of the earth defines the Contingency Area.
Adding the Flight Geography and the Contingency Volume gives us the Operational Volume.
And to minimise the risk to third parties on the surface, in the event of the aircraft leaving the operational volume, we add a Ground Risk Buffer. A Ground Risk Buffer is an area over the surface of the earth surrounding the Operational Volume.
Go to Minute 2:20 on the video above to see the visual representation again.
That concludes our review of the most important definitions for the Space subset. We now move on to the final subset – a few basic definitions which concern the Operation of the drone.
Regulatory Reference: Article 2, Commission Regulation (EU) 2019/947
