Analysis and Concretization of Fuzziness in the U-space Regulation

Abstract

The U-space Regulation will come applicable on January 26, 2023, and it will allow EU Member States to designate U-space airspaces as well as to establish infrastructure. If UAS operators - private and commercial - wish to fly in a U-space airspace, they must use U-space services to maintain safety and an efficient airspace utilization. While the technical basis for the U-space services is included in the U-space Regulation, it omits some crucial details regarding the relationship between its key stakeholders like the U-space service provider and the UAS operator, imposing challenges on the technical implementation. Therefore, a plurality of legally abstract requirements and partially ambiguous provisions (henceforth referred to as fuzziness) need to be concretized in a first step. Subsequently, the derived legal interpretation needs to be tested for its technical practicability in order to practically realise an efficient drone traffic management in U-space. In doing so, this contribution addresses identified fuzziness of the UAS flight authorisation service according to Article 10 of the U-space Regulation and shows the concretization needs for this service in order to fulfil its extensive tasks, such as the authorisation and activation of UAS flights.