Development of a standard to regulate the use of unmanned aerial vehicles in surveying activities at surface mining operations

<jats:p>There exists an urgent need to develop a draft national standard to regulate the use of unmanned aerial vehicles in surveying activities, including the work carried out when designing drilling and blasting operations or when collecting digital geospatial data for surface mining operations. Development of this standard was initiated by UK Kuzbassrazrezugol JSC at the TC 269 'Mining Engineering’ technical committee for standardization. The Kemerovo State University was a co-developer of the standard. Provisions of the developed standard are based on the technological requests of mining companies, best practices of using unmanned aerial vehicles in mine surveying, as well as the current level of technologies. The draft standard has passed a public discussion, received proposals from 10 Russian institutions and organizations and from 2 related technical committees for standardization. The developers of the standard are analyzing opinions of the stakeholders and are finalizing the first draft. Implementation of the developed standard will help remove regulatory barriers to the use of unmanned aerial vehicles in surveying work in quarries, open-cut and strip mines.</jats:p>