ABSTRACT
From infrastructure inspection to emergency services, drones have emerged as an important component of future flight and an increasingly anticipated feature of UK skies. Integrating geography and design, this chapter conducts an interdisciplinary investigation of drones, focusing on both urban populations and built environments and their intersection. This exploration is approached through the case study of Project Skyway. While the majority of drone operations are presently conducted by ground-based operators and flown within Visual Line of Sight, appetite is growing for Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) drone flight, which does not require visual reference and relies on alternative operational mitigations for collision avoidance. As such, initiatives such as Project Skyway, the world's longest BVLOS drone-superhighway poised to connect 165 miles of airspace above six UK towns and cities, have emerged. Yet, while BVLOS is associated with economic and efficiency opportunities, so too do routinised drones prompt resident concerns (from visual and noise disruption to privacy and security) and necessitate timely questions about built environments (inclusive of digital and physical infrastructures). In its investigation of Project Skyway, this chapter foregrounds questions around the ‘how’ of future flight dialogue. It explores three different methods through which to understand BVLOS (focus groups, interactive serious game, and interdisciplinary workshop) while approaching BVLOS therein as a ‘wicked problem’ that at once encompasses diverse stakeholders (including regulators, industry, local authorities and publics), defies solutions-based approaches, and reveals distinct and diverging narratives around future flight therein.
