The service offered by the new application will allow you to have a forecast on flight conditions in a strategic phase with updated and dynamic information, on both conditions of the airspace affected by the mission and any ground conditions, so that risks on ground towards third parties are minimized.

The simulator will in fact provide specialized services to evaluate and monitor, in the planning phase and in the tactical phase, the Total System Error and the Flight Technical Error for different types of drones. In particular, the service powered by d-flight data, will be able to estimate the level of horizontal and vertical protection of a drone in flight, projecting the protection buffer dynamically on a map. This functionality will be useful for operators in all flight phases, intercepting any variations between the planned and the actual flight.

NARROW PATH will also have the opportunity to be enriched with innovative features during the development roadmap, such as those relating to the estimate of population density on the ground of a geographical area of interest. This functionality will be useful for the strategic flight planning phase on the d-flight portal, and will also play a central role in the tactical phase since it can generate any warnings during the flight, if population density increases strongly near the trajectory and position of the drone. Furthermore, the availability of additional d-flight services, such as those relating to the georeferencing of obstacles and low-altitude structures, could further enrich the NARROW PATH service, providing additional added value to end users.

The combination of tracking data generated by drones (equipped with drone boxes) and that taken by meteorological services, will allow the service to be provided in real time too, and that is an essential element to which the partnership with d-flight aims.

Cristiano Baldoni, CEO of d-flight S.p.A, has declared: "The integration of NARROW PATH platform in the services offered by d-flight is part of the intention of providing services with high added value to users, ensuring greater automation of the analysis processes risk for operations and simplifying procedures on the platform. We are convinced that there's still a lot of work to do but we're sure that we have taken the right path to make d-flight an easy and intuitive platform, at the same time able to guarantee the safety of operations."

Salvatore Mennella, CEO of TopView s.r.l., said: "We are pleased to announce the new partnership with d-flight, which will allow us to contribute to the implementation of Unmanned Traffic Management services. The research activity in the U-Space field, in which we have been involved for several years, has revealed interesting considerations on the navigation of drones at low altitude, developed in the NARROW PATH study. Thanks to the experience as UAS operators and the experimental results obtained, we are confident that the NARROW PATH service will allow pilots to increase the efficiency and safety of flight operations."

SAMWISE is a web tool developed according to the best practices (SORA methodology - Specific Operations Risk Assessment - proposed by JARUS) recommended by EASA and made available online by EuroUSC Italia to carry out the risk analysis necessary in the "specific" category starting from July 1st 2020.

The tool allows to perform a first feasibility study of drone operations and checks the possible requirements that have to be met, before proceeding with a complete analysis. If the operation falls into the specific category, the tool leads the operator step by step in the SORA process, to assess the risk for both third parties on the ground and other aircraft in flight. From the combined evaluation of these two aspects, SAMWISE automatically calculates the risk level of the operation (called SAIL, or Specific Assurance and Integrity Level, in SORA jargon) allowing the user to access the list of mitigations that must be implemented in order to ensure that the operation can be carried out safely.

SAMWISE does not replace the need to submit the risk analysis to ENAC but allows a rapid implementation of the process, saving hours of work by the operator. SAMWISE therefore identifies the requirements to be implemented for the safe conduct of the operation.

Its integration within the U-Space platform will allow greater automation of the risk analysis process for operations, directly accessing from the d-flight portal, simplifying and speeding up procedures for all registered users.

 Cristiano Baldoni, CEO of d-flight S.p.A, has declared:

"I am very satisfied with the start of this collaboration, in the context of the DIODE demonstration project. The ability of the U-Space system to provide clear and simple answers to users in order to guide them in the complex world of using remotely piloted vehicles in complete safety is certainly among the objectives of d-flight".”

EuroUSC Italia owns a tradition and significant skills in this context and has already made important progress towards the creation of an online service for the guided editing, by operators, of the Specific Operations Risk Assessment (SORA).

Marco Ducci, CEO of EuroUSC Italia S.r.l, added:

“The signing of this partnership represents the beginning of a collaboration aimed at supporting the implementation of U-Space services in Italy (alias UTM - Unmanned Traffic Management), facilitating users in conducting risk analysis and thus ensuring uniformity that will result in a greater rapidity in obtaining the authorizations thanks to a well-structured and, above all, increasingly automated system. "

***

D-Flight is the new portal for managing drone operations, with features such as: i) registration of aircrafts in the Italian database, according to Art. 14 of EU Regulation 2019/947, ii) assignment of a univocal identification code for each of them, iii) retrieval of useful information in order to plan the flight with drones safely and in compliance with the said Regulation, which will become applicable on July 1st 2020.

D-Flight is the new portal for managing drone operations, with features such as: i) registration of aircrafts in the Italian database, according to Art. 14 of EU Regulation 2019/947, ii) assignment of a univocal identification code for each of them, iii) retrieval of useful information in order to plan the flight with drones safely and in compliance with the said Regulation, which will become applicable on July 1st 2020. ENAC had already anticipated some of the new European standards in its third edition of the National Remote Pilot Aircraft Regulation, dated December 15th 2019. D-Flight was commissioned to make available “the portal dedicated to SAPR operators for the provision of registration services, geo-awareness, remote identification and publication of information on geographical areas ". From March 1st 2020, all SAPR operators are thus obliged to register their drones on the platform, then place the identification QR-code on their drone. Through the d-flight portal, declarations will also be submitted directly to ENAC.

D-Flight is also at the forefront for the further development of the U-Space, according to the roadmap developed and proposed by the European Commission and SESAR JU in the U-Space Blueprint document, considering the services identified by the CORUS project of which ENAV was partner.