Welcome to Lesson 3! In this lesson, you will become familiar with the concept of operating a UAS and how to design a Concept of Operation (CONOP). The CONOP subject focuses on the pre-flight description of the mission that a UAS operation will go through. You will also learn how to analyze risks surrounding UAS operations and to how to assess and mitigate the impact of such risks.
Lesson Objectives
At the successful completion of this lesson, you should be able to:
- understand the concept of operation design strategy.
- understand risk assessment.
- design a CONOP and Risk assessment for a UAS mission.
Lesson Readings
Course Textbooks
- Read chapter 7 "Safety Assessments" of optional textbook: Marshall et al., Introduction to Unmanned Aircraft Systems, 2nd edition
Google Drive (Open Access)
- Gebre-Egziabher, D., et al., "Analysis of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Concept of Operations in ITS Applications."
- FAA document “Integration of Unmanned Aircraft Systems into the National Airspace System Concept of Operations.”
- CONOP developed by NOAA’s National Weather Service: "River Forecast Center (RFC) Analysis and Gridded Forecast Editor Improvement."
Lesson Activities
- Study lesson 3 materials on CANVAS/Drupal and the textbook chapters assigned to the lesson
- Start working on the "CONOP and Risk Assessment" report assignment
- Complete quiz 3
- Submit preliminary project idea
- Start your first post for the discussion on "SWOT Analysis."
- Start UAS Data Processing Using Pix4D for Exercise 1
- Download and practice Mission Planner Software
- Attend the weekly call on Thursday evening at 8:00 pm ET