© Photo credit Duncan Rawlinson (link: https://www.flickr.com/photos/thelastminute/30318577727/in/photostream/)
In the past decade, the last frontier of the air shows has been overcome by the arrival of drones: indeed, a swarm of drones equipped with multi colored lights is now able to fly together and produce spectacular images and text messages for the purpose of advertising as well as entertainment. It is called “drone light show” and it produces dazzling effects.
The first drone light show was displayed in 2012 in Austria (see the video here). From that moment on shows have emerged all over the world and have become more and more suggestive. For example, the opening ceremony of the Olympics 2020 has seen a fleet of 1824 drones flying in the skies above the city of Tokyo and reproducing a floating sphere in the sky that ultimately morphed into the moon and planet earth (see the video here).
A drone light show is less polluting than fireworks as it doesn’t produce garbage, nor dust, or deafening sounds. Furthermore, drones are capable of producing a greater range of effects than fireworks, such as 3D imagery. However, before performing this type of show, it is necessary to check the weather conditions and scan the skies for unauthorized flying objects.
Additionally there is an extensive amount of effort that goes into project management and ensuring impeccable coordination. In fact, drone light shows are manually created using a series of software translating flight commands in synchronized flight. This involves the necessity to conduct a risk assessment and set out safety parameters such as safe distance, optimized integrated hardware, and compliance with aviation and other regulations.
EuroUSC Italia offers consultancy for safety risk assessment according to the SORA methodology, as recommended by EASA (Reg. UE 947/2019), for drone light shows using small UAS, including verification of regulatory compliance based on the CONOPS, identification of the required mitigations and verification of Means of Evidence. In conducting the risk analysis EuroUSC Italia uses SAMWISE, the first tool to carry out the SORA methodology online.
If you are interested in our consultancy, please contact: info@eurousc-italia.it .
For more information about SAMWISE, visit the website www.online-sora.com.