Andhra Pradesh plans to utilize the insights from the toolkit to build a drone delivery program for medical supplies, a use case that is of key interest for many countries. The ADOT lays out a path for scaling drone operations within a national airspace without sacrificing safety and security. It achieves this through a Performance-Based Regulation model where airspace can be accessed on a mission-specific basis.
“Safe, clean, inclusive and scaled drone use has become the goal of many nations,” said Harrison Wolf, report author and project lead at the Forum’s Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. “Now, governments can learn from the real-world success of world leading drone delivery projects in Africa and Europe to develop their own national oversight. Through comparative analysis of shared lessons, learned by governments and private players, this toolkit means governments don”T have to start from scratch and can begin societally important, socially responsible operations. We are really looking forward for the initializing of the pilot project in India.”
Eight international government organization, 10 Civil Aviation Authorities from five continents, and 23 private companies, including well-known drone industry participants Airmap and Zipline, contributed to its development.
“We are honored to be a founding member of the Drone Innovators Network and a contributor to the Advanced Drone Operators Toolkit,” said Ben Marcus, co-founder and chairman at AirMap. “AirMap is actively partnering with regulators, airspace managers, and solutions providers to enable safe and accountable drone operations around the world. Our work in Switzerland provides an excellent example of what is possible today and shows a clear path for other governments to embrace similar programs,” he said.