Article 9 Geo-awareness service

GENERAL

(a)Article 9 contains the requirements for USSPs when providing the geo-awareness service to UAS operators, and should not be confused with the geo-awareness function required by Regulation (EU) 2019/945 for certain UAS classes. In the latter case, geo-awareness is defined as a UAS function that detects a potential breach of the applicable airspace limitations and alerts the remote pilots so that they can take effective and immediate action to prevent that breach from occurring. In the framework of the U-space Regulation, geo-awareness is a USSP service that provides UAS operators with the information about the latest airspace constraints and defined UAS geographical zone information made available as part of the CIS.

(b)This service aims to support UAS operators in fulfilling their obligations, as it provides the necessary information on applicable operational conditions and airspace constraints with the level of accuracy and other performance requirements for which it has been certified.

(c)The geo-awareness service is used by the UAS flight authorisation service as a source of data to inform UAS operators of relevant operational constraints and changes both prior to and during the flight.

INFORMATION USSPs should ensure the timeliness and availability of the geo-awareness information provided to UAS operators.

TIMELINESS USSPs should process and make geo-awareness data available to UAS operators based on the data’s update cycle and criticality level, but no later than its applicability dates and times.

TIMELENESS The table below illustrates the scenarios and values USSPs may consider for the implementation of the geo-awareness service:

TIME FORMAT AND VERSION NUMBER USSPs may use the time format and version number provided in Chapter VIII ‘UAS geographical zone data model’ of and in Appendix 2 to EUROCAE ED-269 ‘MINIMUM OPERATIONAL PERFORMANCE STANDARD FOR GEOFENCING’ standard in the version published in June 2020.