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Towards Engineering Fair and Equitable Software Systems for Managing Low-Altitude Airspace Authorizations

Authors:

Michael C. Hunter,

Agnieszka Marczak-Czajka,

Jane Cleland-HuangAuthors Info & Claims

ICSE-SEIS'24: Proceedings of the 46th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Society

Pages 177 - 188

https://doi.org/10.1145/3639475.3640103

Published: 06 June 2024 Publication History

Abstract

Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS) have gained widespread adoption across a diverse range of applications. This has introduced operational complexities within shared airspaces and an increase in reported incidents, raising safety concerns. In response, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is developing a UAS Traffic Management (UTM) system to control access to airspace based on an sUAS's predicted ability to safely complete its mission. However, a fully automated system capable of swiftly approving or denying flight requests can be prone to bias and must consider safety, transparency, and fairness to diverse stakeholders. In this paper, we present an initial study that explores stakeholders' perspectives on factors that should be considered in an automated system. Results indicate flight characteristics and environmental conditions were perceived as most important but pilot and drone capabilities should also be considered. Further, several respondents indicated an aversion to any AI-supported automation, highlighting the need for full transparency in automated decision-making. Results provide a societal perspective on the challenges of automating UTM flight authorization decisions and help frame the ongoing design of a solution acceptable to the broader sUAS community.

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Cited By

Gohar UHunter MLutz RCohen MFilkov VRay BZhou M(2024)CoDefeater: Using LLMs To Find Defeaters in Assurance CasesProceedings of the 39th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1145/3691620.3695296(2262-2267)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3691620.3695296

Index Terms

Towards Engineering Fair and Equitable Software Systems for Managing Low-Altitude Airspace Authorizations
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Designing software
      1. Requirements analysis

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cover image ACM Conferences

ICSE-SEIS'24: Proceedings of the 46th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Society

April 2024

210 pages

ISBN:9798400704994

DOI:10.1145/3639475

Co-chairs:
Ana Paiva,
Rui Abreu,
Bonita Sharif
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA
,
Xin Xia
Huawei Technologies, China
,
Program Co-chairs:
Prof. Abhik Roychoudhury,
Margaret Storey

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License.

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Published: 06 June 2024

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ICSE-SEIS'24: 46th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Society

April 14 - 20, 2024

Lisbon, Portugal

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2025 IEEE/ACM 46th International Conference on Software Engineering

April 26 - May 3, 2025

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Cited By

Gohar UHunter MLutz RCohen MFilkov VRay BZhou M(2024)CoDefeater: Using LLMs To Find Defeaters in Assurance CasesProceedings of the 39th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1145/3691620.3695296(2262-2267)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3691620.3695296

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