Deriving safety constraints for integration of unmanned aircraft systems into the national airspace by application of STECA

Abstract

Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) have been used for years especially in the military. However, the operation of UAS in civil aviation has been limited since there are a lot of uncertainties: a regulatory scheme needs to be established and associated technologies need to be developed. This thesis contributes to both technology development and establishing a regulatory scheme for UAS by generating safety constraints using the new methodology developed by Professor Leveson and Dr. Fleming. This methodology is called "'Systems-Theoretic Early Concept Analysis" (STECA) and is based on Systems-Theoretic Accident Model and Processes (STAMP) analysis, which is also developed by the professor. STECA has potential to generate more safety constraints that have not been considered otherwise in the early stage of development and this allows the producer to redesign the entire system with potentially less cost. This thesis illustrates why and how STECA can be powerful to support integration of UAS into NAS. In addition, this thesis actually demonstrates how STECA derives safety constraints as a case study and shows how the safety constraints should be integrated in the system development.