On November the 4th, 2020 Aw-Drones took part in an online event titled “Innovative Technologies for Border Management”. Filippo Tomasello, representing AW-Drones member EuroUSC-Italia, attended on behalf of the project. He delivered a presentation of the project, describing its characteristics and potential contribution to Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs). Filippo uncovered the role of the project in contributing to European safety regulation on drones. In addition, he also illustrated how AW-Drones outcomes may help LEAs deploy best practices prior to their drone operations.
Showcasing AW-Drones
Filippo delivered a presentation titled “Standardisation state-of-play and impact on the uptake and deployment by LEAs of drone-based innovative solutions”.
Firstly, he outlined the scope of AW-Drones. Then, he highlighted that its outcomes are already available on the project’s website to the public. Furthermore, he brought up the “Performance-based Regulation” principle to describe the framework in which the project is fitting itself.
For the Safety Assessment to be made prior to any operation, the SORA Methodology is in place, recommended by EASA. SORA requires compliance with certain standards for the assessment to complete. AW-Drones helps the operator with the identification of the needed standards to assess a certain operations safety, in addition to how to implement the mitigations demanded to operate.
Moreover, Filippo illustrated the UAS (Unmanned Aircraft System) Specific category, which regulates those type of drone operations which require authorization by a competent authority and Safety Assessment. More specifically, Filippo summarised the role of one of the project’s main outcomes, the metastandard. The metastandard is an open, public repository of information concerning technical requirements, procedures, and standards of drones globally, including the applicability to different UAS operations categories.
The “Innovative Technologies for Border Management” event
The event organizer, ILEAnet, is facilitating a dialogue between the law enforcement practitioners and the research and innovation communities. The network helps them to work together to find solutions to Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) needs. They bring particular attention to the fields of terrorism, serious organised crime, cybercrime, and migration.
Adopting a LEA perspective, the ILEAnet workshop presented innovative solutions for the enhancement of border management. As drones are used for border surveillance and raise more and more interest among LEAs, ILEAnet invited AW-Drones to present its work. The virtual event took place between 3 and 5 November. It focused on migrants’ registration, pre-frontier area monitoring, and the use of national and EU information systems for border management purposes. Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, supported the workshop and around 150 participants coming from 24 countries attended it. Have a look at this report by Frontex for more info.
