Equivalent Safety Analysis Using Casualty Expectation Approach

This paper describes a methodology for determining what overall system reliability is required to be equivalent to Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) safety requirements. Department of Defense flight test ranges have developed a casual expectation methodology used to calculate the probability of casualty. The methodology uses population density, platform size, system reliability, etc. to calculate the expected casualty rate given a catastrophic in-flight failure. This information is used to plan the flight paths of Unmanned Aerospace Vehicles to avoid casualties. This methodology was expanded to determine equivalent safety for FAA airspace by comparing it to general aviation Federal Aviation Requirements (FAR 23) experience and determining an equivalent level of safety for unmanned aircraft. The results of this analysis were used to determine the required system level safety requirements as a function of Unmanned Aerospace Vehicle (UAV) platform size. Airworthiness regulation authorities can use this data as a basis for determining certification levels of safety for various classes of UAVs.