Towards requirements for third-party assessments in the Specific Operations Risk Assessment process

In the European regulatory regime, civil drone operations are divided into three risk-based categories. A large part of professional drone operations belongs to the specific category, in which authority approval is required to operate. The approval can be applied based on the Specific Operations Risk Assessment, SORA. Based on the risk level determined in SORA, the operation is subject to various safety requirements. Fulfilment of these requirements often calls for the involvement of competent third parties to assess various aspects of the operation. In this paper, we provide a structuring of the needs for third-party involvement in SORA. The study shows that currently there is very limited guidance for performing the third-party assessments or for determining requirements for organizations acting as competent third parties. Such requirements exist in other domains like manned aviation but to enable streamlined regulatory processes for safe drone operations, drone industry specific guidelines are needed. In this paper, we provide examples of standards and regulations that can be used as a basis for further development of the third party assessment procedures.