Unmanned aerial vehicle authorization and geofence envelope determination

A computer implemented method comprising:

• maintaining in a data store, by a computer system comprising hardware, flight operation information associated with a plurality of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) flight operations, including historical flight operation information for historical flight operations which have already occurred;
• receiving, at the computer system, a request to generate a risk assessment report that describes risk associated with an upcoming flight operation, the request indicating one or more aspects of the upcoming flight operation, wherein the risk assessment report describes risk associated with each aspect;
• analyzing, prior to the upcoming flight operation and using the maintained flight operation information, historical flight operation information describing a first plurality of historical flight operations that each included one or more of the aspects of the upcoming flight operation;
• determining by the computer system, based at least in part on the analysis of the historical flight operation information, performance characteristics for each aspect in the request, wherein the performance characteristics include information that informs a safe or functional UAV flight operation, and wherein one or more of the performance characteristics describe determined degradation of a component, indicated by a first aspect of the one or more aspects, that will be utilized during the upcoming flight operation;
• determining by the computer system, using the performance characteristics, risk assessments for each aspect indicated by the request;
• and
• generating, for presentation and by the computer system the risk assessment report using the determined risk assessments.

A computer program product encoded on one or more non-transitory computer storage media, comprising instructions that when executed by the one or more computers cause the one or more computers to perform operations comprising:

• maintaining flight operation information associated with a plurality of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) flight operations, including historical flight operation information for historical flight operations which have already occurred;
• receiving a request to generate a risk assessment report that describes risk associated with an upcoming flight operation, the request indicating one or more aspects of the upcoming flight operation, wherein the risk assessment report describes risk associated with each aspect;
• analyzing, prior to the upcoming flight operation and using the maintained flight operation information, historical flight operation information describing a first plurality of historical flight operations that each included one or more of the aspects of the upcoming flight operation;
• determining, based at least in part on the analysis of the historical flight operation information, performance characteristics for each aspect in the request, wherein the performance characteristics include information that informs a safe or functional UAV flight operation, and wherein one or more performance characteristics describe determined degradation of a component, indicated by a first aspect of the one or more aspects, that will be utilized during the upcoming flight operation;
• determining, using the performance characteristics, risk assessments for each aspect indicated by the request;
• and
• generating, for presentation, the risk assessment using the determined risk assessments.