Drone expansion needs to be considered as a menace in cases of negligent, illicit, or non-cooperative use. In the case of airports, a complete protection against drone intrusion should rely on an intrusion management system, aiming at avoiding the closure of the airport. This system requires the setting of proper risk assessment methodologies for airport operations, to explicitly consider the features of drone intrusion, possibly from a quantitative point of view. This work proposes a methodological framework for the risk assessment of drone intrusions in airports, tailored on drone-intrusion features, airport features, and current operations, and considering both safety-related and security-related causes. The framework is based on the combination of model-based and data-driven approaches in order to: (i) estimate an airport vulnerability index, to measure the susceptibility of the airport to drone intrusions, based on reference datasets; (ii) specify a set of event trees to evaluate the risks of the different threat scenarios related to drone intrusions. The proposed methodological framework is applied to a concrete case study, related to Milan Malpensa airport. The achieved results show the effectiveness of the approach and elicit further requirements for counter-drone systems in airports based on the assessed risks.

In order to manage a multitude of drones deployed simultaneously in the same airspace, the European U-space should supplement its initial mandatory services with conflict detection and resolution services. The introduction of virtual 4D protection bubbles around drones could be a key enabler to ensure separation of aircraft, detect potential conflicts and monitor the effect of associated conflict resolutions. Simulations realized with a dense traffic over a city demonstrate the possibility to generate 4D bubbles in the strategic phase through the use of stochastic optimization algorithms. The addition of tactical monitoring tools ensures the resiliency of such 4D bubbles to unexpected events, such as strong winds. If 4D protection bubbles should facilitate the implementation of future strategic and tactical conflict management services, they could also be used to ensure the execution of initial U-space services.

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