An introduction to the Specific Operations Risk Assessment (SORA) for Airborne Wind Energy

This document on the topic of operational risk assessment has been prepared for review by the AWEurope working group on Safety as an input to the AWE Technical Guidelines which are currently being developed. It contains a general overview of what is expected from a competent authority in the form of a National Aviation Authority (NAA) or Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and the Air Navigation Service Provider (ANSP) to be included in a Concept of Operations (CONOPS) for the testing of an Airborne Wind Energy (AWE) system as well as an overview of the operational risk assessment methodology proposed by the Joint Authority on Rulemaking for Unmanned Systems (JARUS) on specific operations. The overview is based on the Specific Operations Risk Assessment (SORA) V2.0 Guidelines recently published by JARUS [JARUS SORA v2.0 package] as well as the authors recent experience in applying this process to seek an Operational Approval (OA) for a AWE operation in the specific category.