Environmental Data Analytics for Safe Drone Operations in Low-Altitude Urban Environments

Abstract

Drone operations in low-altitude urban airspace might be influenced by weather conditions such as wind and rainfall. Severe weather conditions may exceed the threshold of drone tolerability and cause crash accidents, posing risks to people and property. To investigate the influence of weather conditions on drone operation, this paper presents a data-driven method for analysis of weather data and to identify different levels of risk for safe drone operations. Obtained weather data is first collected across Singapore's 63 weather stations, and trend analysis are conducted to test if there are any significant trends in the yearly weather data. The risk standards in low-altitude urban environments are then classified based on the risk cost model. Similar levels of risk are clustered depending on the geographical location. Preliminary results show that the present weather data can be used to model our simulations as past historical weather data have no significant deviations. The results also concluded that low to high rainfall usually occurs at low wind speeds while high wind speeds tend to have low rainfall. The weather data analysis results can be used to generate an environmental risk-map for safe airspace planning and UAV path optimization.

Research on risk map based on UAV safety operation indicators

“…Small UAV, due to their size and remote control nature, are vulnerable to adverse weather conditions like wind and rainfall during urban low-altitude operations. Unfavorable weather can exceed UAV tolerances, leading to malfunctions and accidents [15,16]. Thus, meteorological conditions are among the indicators for reliable UAV assessment.…”

Review of Wind Flow Modelling in Urban Environments to Support the Development of Urban Air Mobility

“…Likewise, mesoscale satellite weather data obtained from the ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts) and GFS (Global Forecast System) are used to define energy-efficient flight routes [78]. Historical data from weather stations are used to identify weather-related operational risk levels and ideal weather conditions for safe drone operations through statistical and qualitative approaches such as pattern analysis and Beaufort wind scales [79,80].…”

Autonomous Control System with Passive Positioning for Unmanned-Aerial-Vehicle-Assisted Edge Communication in 6G

“…Then, we perform a force analysis of the rain. Based on Newton's second law, the momentum law, and the best raindrop distribution function, the impact force on the structure per unit area is as follows [20]:…”

“…where r k is the inner radius of the moving ring calculated by the K UAV through Equation (16e) and R k is the outer radius of the moving ring calculated by the K UAV through Equation (20). To solve the above nonlinear equation system, after subtracting the nth equation from the first n − 1 equations, the linear equation is obtained:…”