Enabling Safe & Smart Airspace Use
The Australian Digital Airspace Characterisation (ADAC) Project is a national initiative led by QUT’s Centre for Robotics, supported by the Australian Government through the Emerging Aviation Technology Partnerships (EATP) Program, ADAC is pioneering new digital tools to measure and model the safety of drone operations in Australia’s airspace.
ADAC’s ambition is to transform how we understand and manage air risk, especially in the context of integrating drones and emerging aviation technologies.
By integrating terrain, weather, air traffic and other aviation and non-aviation datasets, ADAC is developing a first-of-its-kind digital toolkit that delivers quantitative collision risk analysis across most of Australia’s airspace.
These insights will be available through visual, interactive tools, supporting regulators, government agencies, and operators to streamline planning, risk assessments, and approvals.
Why ADAC?
Drones are set to transform industries from energy and agriculture to logistics and emergency response. To expand operations Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) and enable more automated and autonomous aircraft into shared airspace, robust, trusted safety frameworks are essential.
ADAC is addressing this challenge by:
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Developing large-scale, high-resolution quantitative risk analysis, applying data, modelling and applied statistics to generate actual numerical risk values characterising Australia’s airspace.
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Providing regulators, policymakers, and operators with evidence-based tools to enable safe, large-scale drone use, even in areas with little to no data.
This approach has already generated world-first results and valuable new insights. Importantly, ADAC is not a project built from scratch: it builds on many years of technical research and real-world testing in countries including the UK and New Zealand. The project is now pushing that foundational research further, applying it in the Australian context.
The project is grounded in real-world deployment, not just theory — demonstrated by live case studies with operators.
Our Research Approach
ADAC brings together expertise in robotics, aviation safety, data science, and applied statistics to deliver practical insights for the aviation ecosystem.
Our work includes:
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Complete airspace data analysis – leveraging large-scale data across coastal, regional, and urban environments.
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High-resolution risk modelling – translating airspace data into actionable, numerical risk values.
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Real-world case studies – applying ADAC methods to scenarios such as coastal monitoring, regional logistics, and emergency response.
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Operations agnostic frameworks – creating methodologies regulators and operators can use to support BVLOS approvals.
Impact
ADAC is delivering world-first insights that have the potential to shape the future of drone regulation and operations in Australia.
Key outcomes include:
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A high resolution, digital risk maps of Australia’s airspace, the first dataset of its kind.
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New risk modelling frameworks to guide safety decisions in both data-rich and data-sparse regions.
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Potential BVLOS pathways for operators across among others energy, agriculture, logistics, and emergency management.
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Collaboration between government, research, and industry, ensuring drones are integrated into the national airspace safely and effectively.
Partners
The ADAC Project is delivered in collaboration with:
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Boeing Australia
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FlyFreely
With Funding from:
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The Australian Government (EATP Program)
With Data providers
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Aireon
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OzRunways
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Boeing Digital Services
With stakeholders and case study partners including:
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Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA)
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Industry partners across aviation, energy, and drone services
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QUT research teams in robotics, aviation safety, and statistics
Learn More
For further information, please contact:
Dr Aaron McFadyen – Chief Investigator
Dr. Guilherme Froes Silva – Chief Investigator