Understanding U-AGREE: EuroUSC Italia Insights on Privacy and Security Effects of UAS Operations

Marta Gouveia is a Safety and Compliance Engineer at EuroUSC Italia. In U-AGREE her work focuses on improving the SORA ground risk model, with particular contributions to the estimation of ground impact consequences. Within this context, she has supported the extension of ground risk evaluation beyond safety outcomes to include environmental, economic, and reputational impacts. Her work also involves the detailed assessment of the severity of additional negative effects of UAS operations beyond ground impacts.

In this interview, she shares her insights on how privacy and security risks are defined, assessed, and integrated within the U-AGREE framework.

How are  “privacy and security risks” defined within the context of UAS operations?

In U‑AGREE, privacy and security risks refer to the negative effects of UAS operations on individuals, data, and systems, beyond physical safety. Privacy risks mainly concern unintended surveillance, data collection, and perception of intrusion, while security risks relate to cyber threats, loss of data integrity, unauthorised access, jamming, spoofing, or misuse of drones. The U-AGREE visual card clearly represents these risks as privacy threats, cyber‑attacks, and criminal misuse scenarios, highlighting societal and operational concerns. 

What is the current state of the art in assessing privacy and security risks? Please refer to existing methodologies, models, or regulatory approaches currently in use.  

Current approaches to assessing privacy and security risks rely on a combination of regulatory frameworks, methodological guidance, and indicator-based assessment techniques. These are typically complemented by qualitative risk classification methods, which assess privacy and security impacts based on the specific operational context, level of exposure, and potential sensitivity of the environment. In addition, established security risk assessment methodologies are commonly used to identify and evaluate potential vulnerabilities and threats. More recent developments also include indicator-based models, which aim to translate privacy and security concerns into more measurable and comparable metrics, supporting a more systematic and transparent evaluation process. 

Which factors or variables are considered most critical in evaluating privacy and security?  

U-AGREE identifies key variables, including: 

• Type of mission and payload (e.g. cameras, sensors, data links) 
• Operational environment, especially proximity to residential or sensitive areas 
• Number of people potentially observed or affected 
• Data handling and protection measures (collection, storage, transmission) 
• System robustness against cyber threats (encryption, authentication, resilience) 
• Frequency and duration of operations, which amplify cumulative impact

How does the U-AGREE project approach and implement these risks? 
U-AGREE integrates privacy and security considerations into an extended Ground Risk Model by defining specific impact domains related to these aspects and assigning qualitative severity scores (low, medium, or high) to each of them. It further incorporates weight factors based on societal concerns, drawing on EASA studies on the societal acceptance of Urban Air Mobility in Europe, and uses these inputs to compute composite severity scores alongside other societal impacts. This approach enables a more holistic and balanced risk assessment, ensuring that non-technical factors such as public perception and data protection are systematically considered alongside traditional safety metrics, ultimately supporting more informed and responsible decision-making. 

What results or preliminary findings have U-AGREE achieved so far regarding privacy and security risks? 

Early results from U-AGREE indicate that privacy and security impacts are highly context-dependent and often strongly influenced by the specific operational environment, particularly the location. For instance, simulations and preliminary scenario analyses show that urban areas tend to exhibit higher severity levels in terms of privacy and security, mainly due to increased exposure of individuals and the sensitivity of collected data. Similarly, security risks are found to rise in proximity to critical infrastructure or in contexts where communication systems may be more vulnerable to interference or intrusion. These findings also highlight that even operations considered low-risk from a safety perspective can generate significant societal concerns if privacy and security aspects are not properly addressed. Overall, the initial model validation suggests that integrating these dimensions is essential for a more realistic and comprehensive assessment of operational risk.