About the Project
Drone Zone Austria represents a scientific exploratory approach to develop a
Web Portal in order to provide relevant high resolution spatial information for supporting legally compliant
drone mission planning in Austria. Based on current legislation in Austria the important constraints to
consider for safe drone mission planning are (I) the area of operation (i.e. settlement density), (II)
key aeronautical information (e.g. aerodromes, control zones, flight restriction zones, etc.) and (III)
presence of
environmental protected areas (e.g. National parks, Natura 2000 areas, etc.). Drone Zone
Austria is a project that for the first time provides a nationwide holistic
integration and a compiled map-based high resolution view of the local distribution of these mission
planning critical spatial data sources to support safe drone mission planning and operation.
Drone Zone Austria must be seen as a support tool for drone mission
planning based on virtual information. Under no circumstances can the information provided here
replace a real world mission site evaluation!
Drone Zone Austria is a scientific research project, therefore we accept no liability for and make no
guarantee as to the correctness and/or completeness of the data and information available through the
portal – please refer to the Disclaimer in English or
in German for further details.
Acknowledgements
The exploratory project Drone Zone Austria has received funding from the Austrian research
funding program "Take Off". "Take Off"
is a Research, Technology and Innovation Funding Program of the Austrian Federal Ministry for Transport,
Innovation and Technology (BMVIT). The Austrian
Research Promotion Agency (FFG) has been authorized for
the Program Management.
In 2020, Drone Zone Austria was selected as one of six eAward 2020 nominees in the category
"Smart City and Infrastructure".
Data Sources and Data Quality
Data sources like Google Maps, Google Earth or Bing Maps are most commonly used as a source of information
for Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) mission planning, but they have no legal reliability and do
not guarantee actuality. At the same time, RPAS mission planning is a spatial task that needs high quality,
accurate and up-to-date situational awareness information about the area of interest for safe planning and
operation. Therefore the key foundation of this web portal is a geospatial Drone Zone Model derived from
available up-to-date high quality trusted national geodata sources, which are provided by the Austrian
public administration and the Austrian Aviation Control as a result of the Open Government Data Initiative
and the European INSPIRE Geodata Infrastructure
directive.
Area of operation
Since November 2018, three areas of operation for UAS are defined in Austria depending on the building density:
(I) uninhabited, (II) populated and (III) densely populated. These areas of operation are described in a
narrative form, but no spatial map based delineation is provided. Any
high-resolution and professional drone mission planning has the major goal to derive GPS waypoints used for
navigation. Here the boundaries of the operational zones are of special interest, because drone platforms are
certified for specific operational areas
as stated in legal issued individual drone operation approvals.
Violation of such an approval may result in fines up to 22,000€. Therefore there exists a strong
need for a science-based extraction and map representation of these three operational zones.
For the first time we provide a a proposal for a nationwide map representation of important areas of
operation with a major focus on populated areas (category II) and densely populated areas (category
III) for Austria. The classification and differentiation in populated and densely populated areas
(i.e.”spatially closed urbanization zones comparable to the inner city of a typical market town or district
capital”) is based on an empirical assessment of the mean address and building
point density. We use here a threshold of 9 buildings per hectare. A “building” and an "address"
in the context of this project are defined as point geometries provided by the Federal Office of Metrology
and Surveying (BEV) as a nationwide Open Government Data
set. Building and address point data are represented in the map in aggregated form as 100m x 100m regional
statistical units as defined by Statistik Austria. Additionally,
we provide a different cartographic representation of settlement density showing the building and address
density distribution as a so called “Heatmap”.
Nature Protection Areas
In many nature protection areas in Austria (e.g.
National Parks,
Nature Parks, Natura 2000 areas etc.) the use
of drones is restricted or prohibited. Such restrictions are defined in Austria very often at the federal
state level. Therefore for any drone operation in such a protected area an additional operational approval
is necessary, so a consultation with the local and regional authorities is highly recommended!
Drone-related Aviation Regulations & Aeronautical Information
Any responsible drone operation in the national airspace must consider and follow rules and restrictions
defined by national legal aviation regulations. These are defined in detail for certified drones in an
operational approval issued by the national aviation authority
Austro Control.
The key issue here are safety requirements and safety considerations in order to prevent fatal interaction
and endangerment of other professional and recreational airspace users like commercial and private
airplanes, rescue helicopters, gliders and paragliders. Special attention must be given to regulations in
the vicinity of controlled and uncontrolled airports as well as to military training areas.
All official aeronautical information presented in the Drone Zone Austria Web Portal are
provided via GI web services by the National Aviation Authority Austro Control as part of their contribution
to the European Spatial Data Infrastructure INSPIRE
.
Spatial Context Map Data
Reliable and up-to date accurate spatial background data like high quality aerial images, building
footprints or road networks provide a valuable context information and important support for drone mission
planning. Drone Zone Austria is utilizing the Austrian
basemap.at which is a high-performance
web basemap published under an Open Government Data (OGD) license. It is based upon data provided by the
nine Austrian federal states and their partners.
Further development
Further development of the web portal is carried out within the framework of an FFG financed project Drone Risk
Austria. This project aims at creation of a supplemental service that will facilitate drone mission risk assessment
with respect to the newest EU legislation. It is planned to get the service running by the end of 2020.