Drone Delivery Group has submitted a white paper entitled ‘A National Strategy for Drones Across Land, Sea and Air’ to the UK government. The proposal argues in favour of unifying and harmonising many aspects of drone regulation and standardisation across all domains.
The paper says in order to encourage the adoption of drones in the UK and to deliver clear social, economic, and environmental benefits, the development of harmonised ‘cross-domain’ regulations for drone technology and operations, which refer to industry developed ‘Safety and Quality’ standards, as an ‘Acceptable Means of Compliance’ (AMC) is urgently needed. The paper respectfully suggests the implementation of a strategy for a harmonised approach to the regulations of drone technology and operations across all domains as part of a policy promoting ‘standards heavy – regulation light’. It says this would shift the emphasis towards industrial self-responsibility as systems progress towards increasing levels of autonomy.
“To achieve this, regulators across all domains are now challenged to enable the controlled development of autonomy within the commercial sector through harmonised regulation and standardisation:
- ensuring the agility of the regulatory environment matches the agility needed in a rapidly evolving industry;
- ensuring the safe and efficient operation of all drone technology systems, side by side with current manned equivalents, by harmonising the approach to the development of regulations to enable innovation and economic growth of this, important, emerging industry;
- overseeing the controlled development of autonomy in the drone industry rather than simply allowing its development without core safety principles;
- developing appropriate certification ‘schemes’ for drone technology across all domains to enable commercialisation;
- actively support development of national and international ‘Safety and Quality’ standards through the UK’s national standards body (BSI) and the mirrored ISO committees.
Drone Delivery Group claims that tackling this issue can offer coast savings and provide a boost to the industry in the UK.
Read the white paper here
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