RPAS 2013 Brussels June 24-27 – Conference Preview Part 4

UVS International’s RPAS 2013 Conference being held at the Royal Military Academy in Brussels next week is also billed as the European RPAS Regulatory Forum, so it’s no surprise that regulatory matters and in particular, updates on the European RPAS Roadmap form  an essential part of the programme. The Wednesday morning session opens with presentations from the European Commission, DG Mobility & Transport (MOVE), EUROCONTROL and JARUS.

The first speaker is René Zbos from the European Commission, DG Mobility & Transport (MOVE) who titles his presenation “European RPAS Roadmap: The Objectives – From a Regulatory Perspective”.

This presentation will provide an overview of the European Commission’s European RPAS Roadmap Initiative, which concerns the incremental integration of RPAS into the European air traffic system from 2016. It will outline the motivation of DG Mobility & Transport to, jointly with DG Enterprise & Industry, commission it, and present the roadmap, highlight its objectives from a regulatory perspective, and explain the projected way forward and the relevant timelines.

René Zbos graduated from the Royal Military Academy of Belgium with a Master degree in Mechanical Engineering. After having assumed various levels of responsibilities within the Belgian Air Force as technical officer, he joined the European Commission in 2010 as policy officer in the Air Safety Unit of DG MOVE. He handles cases related to the list of banned air carriers, is responsible for the development and implementation of regulations related to initial and continuing airworthiness of aircraft, and he acts as the focal point of the Unit for all matters related to Research. René is also member of the RPAS team created within the European Commission.

Then ist the turn of, Mike Lissone of EUROCONTROL, EuropeEuropean with “Paving The Way Towards RPAS ATM Integration”.

Mike will present the “European RPAS activities” providing an overview of the RPAS R&D approach and ongoing RPAS developments in Europe. This presentation will provide an overview of work to date undertaken by EUROCONTROL and the early results of the regulatory gap analysis. It will also provide an overview of the EUROCONTROL work programme until 2018.

Mike Lissone is the UAS ATM Integration manager for EUROCONTROL. He has been the main contributor in the development of the RPAS R&D roadmap and is actively involved in the ICAO UASSG and other international entities developing standards and regulation to enable RPAS integration.

Then Ron van de Leijgraaf of the Joint Authorities for Rulemaking on Unmanned Systems (JARUS) will close the first session with “RPAS Roadmap Implementation: The JARUS Perspective”.

Within Europe, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) is responsible for RPAS with a MTOM larger than 150 kg and national authorities are responsible for RPAS with lower weights. In theory, this could lead to the development of differing requirements for Light RPAS by each individual NAA. In an attempt to avoid this differentiation CAA-NL initiated an international coordination group called JARUS (Joint Authorities for Rulemaking on Unmanned Systems). This group intends to discuss and harmonise the requirements and limitations for Light RPAS in seven different working groups:

1. Operations and FCL
2. Organisational approvals
3. Airworthiness
4. Detect and avoid
5. Command, control and communications
6. System safety (‘1309’)
7. Airworthiness process (‘Part 21’)

The output of the group will consist of regulatory proposals accepted by a significant number of European NAAs, as well as EASA and Eurocontrol. At the same time, an effort is being made to harmonise the regulations with a number of non-European Union countries such as the Australia, Brazil, Canada, Russia, South Africa and the USA. Draft regulations will be consulted with industry and other stakeholders before they are recommended to national aviation authorities for national or regional adaptation. In the past year, the group has been adapting to facilitate the EU RPAS Roadmap developments.

One of the key changes is that the consultation scheme for JARUS deliverables will be in developed in close cooperation with EASA consultation, since EASA in principle wants to adopt the JARUS deliverables once they will become responsible within Europe for RPAS regulations below 150 kg. During the presentation a short overview of the new organisational structure of the group and the work schedule to define a harmonised set of requirements will be presented.

In 2007, Ron started to work on regulation for unmanned aircraft at the Dutch Civil Aviation Authorities. Since 2012 he works in the Aviation Safety department of the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment. His primary activity at the Ministry continues to be RPAS regulations. This means that he will continue his international activities regarding establishing the international harmonisation on airworthiness regulation with other national aviation authorities, EASA and EUROCONTROL. For this harmonisation, Ron created the authorities coordination group JARUS. This group will cooperate with the EUROCAE WG73 and WG93, by providing draft regulation to this group for consultation with industry and stakeholders. Ron is a member of EUROCAE Working Group 73 and chairman of EUROCAE Working Group 93. Furthermore he is the member on behalf of The Netherlands of the ICAO UAS Study Group.

For the full programme with abstracts and speakers bio data, click here.

An online registration form is available here.