Simon Trahair-Davies of Stephens Scown LLP outlines the European Commission’s proposals for regulating the operations of drones in civilian applications, an emerging technology with significant possibilities in the aggregates and quarrying world.
Last year at an aggregates producer conference in the UK proceedings were enlivened by the demonstration of a drone (also known as an unmanned aerial vehicle or UAV) used for aerial mapping of quarries.
There was a touch of James Bond about the whole thing, and a sceptic may well have thought that, while exciting, this was in reality a technology of limited practical use for the average aggregates producer. It is likely however that in the long run such sceptics will be proved wrong. The prospects of substantially increased use of UAVs in the civilian sphere has been recognised by the
Whilst traditionally, use of UAVs has been dominated by the military, increasingly they are being used in civilian applications. A recent pizza delivery stunt in Italy is one example and there appears to be great scope for their use in a wide field of applications such as agriculture, emergency search and rescue, but also in mining and quarrying.
The advantages are obvious in that UAVs should be able to provide up-to-date geospatial mapping and information, potentially with low maintenance and staffing costs. UAVs may well be cheap and easy to set up and run and will be able to provide vital information with little or no risk to employees.
The technology has already been successfully used in the mining and oil and gas industries. In 2012 a UAV flew for 80 minutes over one of the world’s highest mines in the Chilean Andes, carrying out a detailed digital terrain map of the mine. In June 2014, BP became the first company to be granted permission to fly commercial drones over US soil. It will use them to survey pipelines, roads and equipment at its operations in Alaska.
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There are of course limits to the abilities of the technology at present, such as flight time capability and limitations on the weight of the equipment that can be carried. There are also regulatory issues. The EC has recognised the need to coordinate at the EU level integration of UAVs into civilian airspace from 2016 onwards.
The Communication the EC issued earlier this year is designed to remove barriers to the introduction of UAVs in the European Single Market, while safeguarding valid public concerns about increased use within civilian life.
The main points of the EC’s proposal are:
• Safety: UAVs are to be operated at an equivalent level of safety as manned aviation. The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) is to develop common standards which will allow for harmonisation.
• Privacy and data protection: operation of UAVs must respect privacy and data protection principles, particularly as the potential civilian uses of UAVs involve the collection of personal data or raise privacy concerns in the area of surveillance, monitoring, mapping or video recording. Operators of the UAVs will need to comply with data protection laws and the EC is going to assess how to make UAV operations compliant with data protection rules.
• Liability and insurance: the EC has identified that the current third party insurance regime relating to manned aircraft may need reassessment in light of developments in the UAV market. For example in manned flight mass (starting from 500kg) determines the minimum amount of insurance that has to be held. The Commission intends to assess the need to amend the current rules for UAVs (many of which may weigh less than 500kg) and to promote the development of an efficient insurance market in this sector.
• Security: the EC is aware of the security risk caused by the possibility of unlawful actions and therefore work will need to be done on developing the necessary security requirements, followed by development of specific legal obligations for those regulating or operating in the field.
It seems clear that with the right regulatory framework the use of UAVs will greatly increase in future years, not least in the mining sector where they offer opportunities to gather information and monitor operations in a cost-effective way and with limited exposure to risk by employees.
The EC’s proposals to take steps to harmonise the market at EU level may well accelerate the development of the technology, and the sight of drones buzzing around above the quarry floor will be an increasingly common one.
Simon Trahair-Davies is a partner in the mining and minerals team at
Simon can be contacted on +44 (0)1872 265100 or
email <%$Linker:
For more information visit Stephens Scown website
