What does SEEDPOD do?
SEEDPOD's end goal is to provide a better framework for calculating the ground risk of Uncrewed Aerial Systems (UAS). Instead of merely avoiding built-up areas entirely, we can now give specific risk values (i.e. fatalities per hour) at each point on the map. This enables UAS operators to assess the ground risk of their current flight path and formulate alternate routes that minimise fatality risk.
Utilising census data, transient road data and aircraft characteristics, SEEDPOD can calculate the ground risk that UAS poses to humans on the ground. As the data is transient and does take into account where people are during the day and at night, the fatality risk changes with time. This has significant effects on routes based on whether they are flown at night and over the weekend, where a higher percentage of people are at home, or during a busy day, where more people will be at work or school. The aircraft data is used to calculate 'risk cones', i.e. the maximum distance that the aircraft could travel if it had an engine or communication failure.
Figure 1: Example of a Risk Map over Southampton.
In the above picture, areas of high risk are highlighted and annotated. Note that the maps are transient, with areas of high population density during the day (e.g. The Southampton General Hospital) having a lesser overflight risk at night. The 'dissipation' of risk that can be seen during the evening and nighttime risk maps is due to the population overwhelmingly returning to suburban and residential areas. This data can be seen more clearly below.
Figure 2: Observe the dissipation of population density at nighttime.
Figure 3: Temporal population data used to calculate potential strike risk.
Transient data considers the percentage of the population that are travelling on the roads at any one time. This is important when considering risk calculations around rural areas where static population density may be negligable, but where a motorway or significan road system may be present. Considering that even a small drone would have significant impact energy when connecting with a car travelling 70mph and that the impact may result in further incidents on the road, this is a significant source of risk. Figure 4 is a depiction of the transient population density on the roads around Southampton.
Figure 4: Temporal population density on the roads around Southampton.