Urban drone operations: A data-centric and comprehensive assessment of urban airspace with a Pareto-based approach

Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) are one of the fastest-growing sectors in the aviation industry. Concerns have also been raised regarding the potential risks posed by unmanned aircrafts (UAs), commonly known as drones, which are expected to operate at low-altitude. Unlike high-altitude airspaces, operating UA in low-altitude airspaces requires consideration of their impact on a variety of existing environmental factors, including people and buildings. Several studies have attempted to identify accessible airspaces by considering the impact of drone operations on people or buildings. However, existing studies are insufficient to comprehensively reflect these effects. In this study, we propose a data-centric framework for a comprehensive assessment of airspaces for drone operations in urban environments. The population risk and airspace availability were defined and measured to reflect complex urban environments using high-resolution datasets. Our comprehensive airspace assessment employed quadrant and Pareto ranking analyses. We identified feasible airspaces using quadrant analysis and accessible airspaces with limited resources using Pareto ranking analysis. Our framework can be incorporated into UAS traffic management (UTM) operations, because it configures dynamic airspaces based on high-resolution urban datasets, even in complex urban areas.