International Commercial Drone Regulation and Drone Delivery Services

Abstract

This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest.RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors. iii Preface Delivery drones may become widespread over the next five to ten years, particularly for what is known as the "last-mile" logistics of small, light items. Amazon, Google, the United Parcel Service (UPS), DHL, Alibaba, and other companies have been running high-profile experiments testing delivery drone systems, and the development of such systems reached a milestone when the first commercial drone delivery approved by the Federal Aviation Administration took place on July 17, 2015. In the future, drones could augment, or in some situations even replace, truck fleets and could have important implications for energy consumption, public safety, personal privacy, air pollution, city noise, air traffic management, road congestion, urban planning, and goods-and service-consumption patterns in urban areas. Support RANDTo support developing issues regarding delivery drones, the RAND Corporation launched an exploratory study that brings together RAND's expertise in unmanned aerial vehicle operations, transportation research, systems analysis, and behavioral analysis and applies it to this emerging and underexplored research area.The larger project includes several complementary research efforts focused on different facets of the delivery drone system and their likely impact on the public. The other RAND publications in this series include the following: (Kuhn, 2017).In this report, we summarize the current status of the international regulatory environment for drone delivery services.Questions or comments about this report should be sent to the project leaders, William Welser (William_Welser@rand.org) and Jia Xu (Jia_Xu@rand.org). RAND Science, Technology, and PolicyThe research reported here was conducted in the RAND Science, Technology, and Policy program, which focuses primarily on the role of scientific development and technological innovation in human behavior, global and regional decisionmaking as it relates to science and technology, and the concurrent effects that science and technology have on policy analysis and policy choices. The program covers such topics as space exploration, information and iv...

UAS for Wetland Mapping and Hydrological Modeling

“…Across the globe, regulations regarding UAS use differ greatly, spanning from very restrictive in countries who favor the safety-first approach to more permissive, supporting development of new technologies. Favorable regulations have aided the US, Europe, and China to become the largest markets in the world for commercial drone use [88]. Regulations in Europe vary from country to country (similarly to the patchwork of state-level legislation in the US).…”

“…In China, the use of UAS is spatially restricted to airspace that is not controlled by the military (which governs over a half of national airspace). Although the level of restrictiveness vary in national laws worldwide, there are common elements of regulation: pilot's license, aircraft registration, restricted zones, and insurance [88]. The requirements take into account UAS mass, flight altitude, type of use and sometimes pilot licence level.…”

UAVs for Hydrologic Scopes: Application of a Low-Cost UAV to Estimate Surface Water Velocity by Using Three Different Image-Based Methods

“…The selected reach of the river provides the proper accessibility, since the riparian vegetation from one of the riverbanks is very low, while the road network is nearby and there are two bridges before and after the specific reach ( Figure 1b). It is worth mentioning that the study area is not listed as a restricted flying zone while hovering at ≤50 m from the user's location, so it is legal to fly without any flight plan according to the Greek National Regulations [50]. Due to many previous rainy days before the UAV flight, the water flow of Aggitis River had increased while the water was muddy.…”

Measurement of above‐canopy meteorological profiles using unmanned aerial systems

“…Also, due to internal protocols, some public sector personnel may not be able to deploy a UAS rapidly. For flights that are not conducted in the United States, each country may have their own set of laws and regulations that should be abided by (Jones, ). In addition, UAV battery life can be another limitation; one charge typically provides for approximately 20 to 25 min of flight time, less under windy conditions.…”