The Drone Safety Team (DST) is an industry-government partnership committed to ensuring the safe operations of drone aircraft systems (UAS) in the national airspace system. The DST supports the safe integration of UAS with data-driven safety enhancements and collaboration amongst members of the UAS industry.
DST is adopting the same collaborative model as the General Aviation Joint Steering Committee (GAJSC) & Commercial Aviation Safety Team (CAST)
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Airspace Awareness and Geofencing
Out-of-the-Box Protection of
High-Risk Airport Locations
Recommendations for using Airspace Awareness and Geofencing
Purpose: This document provides an example of how the DST is able to leverage industry partnerships and
collaboration to develop solutions focused on improving awareness and enhancing safety in the NAS.
The objective of SE-1 Airspace Awareness and Geofencing is to reduce the risk of collision with otheraircraft or structures by improving airspace awareness (of operators) and geofencing capabilities (of systems).
The UAST identified two areas that should be addressed:
a) Education, outreach (and possibly credentialing) centered around airspace authorization.
b) Enabling technology safety features to help prevent flight into unauthorized airspace.
The DST supports concurrent UAS safety enhancement efforts focusing on individual operators, product
manufacturers, and service providers alike. While other industry and government efforts are ongoing
that will address the education, outreach, and credentialing aspects of SE-1, this white paper focuses
one specific technology – geofencing, for industry consideration and system integration. Further, this
white paper is limited to one specific recommendation regarding geofencing. Other recommendations
may follow in the future.
The DST acknowledges that subsequent refinement of concepts proposed in this document or related
standards and specifications must be jointly developed by qualified government and industry
stakeholders (e.g., FAA, ASTM, RTCA, etc.).