PhD project within the frame of the RegulAIR project.
Various states around the globe are endeavouring to integrate drones into their civilian airspaces. Practically, these ‘civil drones’ will be useful for logistics, inspection, filmmaking, and other applications. This project focuses on the regulatory efforts being made by the European Union (EU) to ensure that drones are safely integrated into civil airspace. Notably, civil drone operations are increasingly backed by self-operating systems which can offer operational as well as safety benefits. However, self-operation (be it automatic or autonomous) can also potentially challenge safety.
Therefore, this project asks: How does ‘self-operation’ challenge drone safety law, and to what extent can law address those challenges? Following a case study research design, an in-depth analysis of EU drone regulations seeks to answer this research question by dividing it into two sub-research questions:
SRQ (1): How does ‘self-operation’ challenge existing EU law on drone safety? SRQ (2): How can EU law on drone safety suitably address the challenges posed by self-operation?
Three articles answer the above research questions. The theoretical underpinnings of this project lie in the ‘law and technology enterprise’ as it delves into sociotechnical considerations, regulatory lag, the tech-specificity versus tech-neutrality of rules, and regulative features of drone technology. Methodologically, this project follows a contextual doctrinal method, which allows for the analysis of law in its broader social context. Doctrinal analysis of EU drone regulations is thus complemented by insights from my participation in different stakeholders’ fora and theoretical insights from non-legal fields.
Seen from this perspective, self-operation challenges EU drone regulation in three ways: Firstly, conceptual issues arise from drone regulations’ use of the terms ‘autonomous operation’ and ‘remote pilot’. Secondly, self-operation is subject to important regulatory obscurities. Thirdly, safety regulation is challenged for infrastructural reasons.
These challenges can largely be addressed by reconceptualizing key terms and improving design-based regulation. Nonetheless, this project’s findings also show that law will have a limited role in the safety regulation of drones’ self-operation.
- Supervisor at PRIO: Bruno O. Martins
- Supervisor at the University of Oslo: Kristin Bergtora Sandvik
