Drone Information Service Requirements for U-Space

The work presented in this paper is part of the SESAR Horizon 2020 exploratory research project DREAMS, which analyses operational and technical aspects of drone Aeronautical Information Management (AIM) for Europe’s Unmanned Traffic Management system, U-Space. The main objective of DREAMS is to analyse the present and future needs of aeronautical information for future drone flight. The present paper investigates the required information services for achieving safe drone traffic operations in very low altitude airspace. The required drone information services were identified by conducting a comprehensive gap analysis on existing information services from manned aviation and current U-Space service providers in line with drone operator and user requirements. The latter was amalgamated from a comprehensive online survey, an identification of reference scenarios and high-level U-Space services. This research study indicated information gaps in seven key categories: flow management, meteorological, environment, flight, surveillance, communication and drone (vehicle) information. Finally, solutions to bridge these gaps are proposed in this paper.