The new version of the “JARUS guidelines on Specific Operations Risk Assessment (SORA)”
is now available on the Joint Authorities for Rulemaking of Unmanned Systems (JARUS) website.
The ‘specific’ category is a category of UAS operation that, considering the risks involved, requires an authorisation by the competent authority before the operation takes place, taking into account the mitigation measures identified in an operational risk assessment, except for certain standard scenarios where a declaration by the operator is sufficient or when the operator holds a light UAS operator certificate (LUC) with the appropriate privileges.;
According to a Linkedin post from Alexandra Florin, Drones Project Manager at the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and a member of Working Group 6, one of the two JARUS working groups tasked with developing less complex SORA processes, the new document “provides a revised and streamlined approach to the risk assessment methodology which is supported also by four new annexes….This is another very important step for the European drone industry since EASA plans to recognise the SORA as Acceptable Means of Compliance to the risk assessment requested in the Specific Category.”
JARUS Working Group 6 (Safety and Risk Management) along with Working Group 4 (Detect and Avoid) have been working together to consolidate this JARUS deliverable taking into account the internal and external JARUS consultation processes with contributions from all over the world. An Executive Summary has been introduced to present in two pages the structure of the SORA methodology.
The second issue of the SORA Main Body provides a revised and streamlined approach to the risk assessment methodology which is supported also by four new Annexes:
- Annex B: Integrity and assurance levels for the mitigations used to reduce the intrinsic Ground Risk Classes
- Annex C: Strategic Mitigation Collision Risk Assessment
- Annex D: Tactical Mitigations Collision Risk Assessment
- Annex E: Integrity and assurance levels for the Operational Safety Objectives (OSO)
According to JARUS: the guidelines to define a UAS operation ConOps (Annex A) and the Glossary (Annex I) are still valid and applicable: all Annexes are at issue 1.0.
For more information
http://jarus-rpas.org/publications.
