GUTMA General Assembly and new Board of Directors

By globalutm Uncategorized June 18, 2018

The Global UTM Association recently held its second General Assembly. Over the past year, the association has grown to over 60 members, representing 23 countries worldwide, and continued its ambitious journey towards worldwide recognition. The association is made up of a varied mix of stakeholders – both geographically and professionally – drawing together air navigation service providers, UAS operators and manufacturers, UTM data and software providers, infrastructure providers, consulting corporations, national and international regulatory bodies, and academic experts.

The association has published a flight logging protocol (available at https://bitbucket.org/global_utm/flight-logging-protocol), and has started to revise its UTM Architecture document to align itself with the various existing initiatives in the United States, Europe, and Japan, and with other partners. A technical project manager has recently joined the GUTMA staff, he is preparing the groundwork for a proposal on interoperable registration systems.

GUTMA has placed special emphasis on internal and external education. The “GUTMA Talks” series of webinars has become a successful initiative, exclusive to members of the association. As part of its external efforts, GUTMA is frequently invited to major international trade shows and congresses around the world to host sessions or tracks on UTM. Up to June 2018, GUTMA has taken part in the following events: the ICAO RPAS2017 and Drone Enable Symposium (Montreal, CA), EASA High-Level Conference on Drones (Helsinki, FI), World ATM Congress (Madrid, ES), Mobile World Congress (Barcelona, ES), UAV Expo (Amsterdam, NL), Unmanned Aircraft 2018 (Moscow, RU), and AUVSI Xponential (Denver, CO). Beyond these public appearances, the association has organized its first regional conference in the Asia-Pacific area in March, in collaboration with “Japan Drone 2018”. The event was sponsored by NTT Data, NTT docomo, and Unifly. GUTMA also held its annual conference including a live UTM demo in Madrid in June. The conference was co-organized with everis and ENAIRE.

The annual general assembly was held on June 5, 2018, in Madrid. Members have elected the 2018-2019 board of directors. Its composition remains unchanged compared to the previous year: Jonathan Evans (Skyward) is President, Marc Kegelaers (Unifly) is Vice President, Lorenzo Murzilli (Swiss FOCA) is Treasurer, and Sebastian Babiarz (Airmap), Samuel Dépraz (SenseFly (Parrot Group)), Kei Ikami (NTT Data), Richard Parker (Altitude Angel), Christian Struwe (DJI), and Mark Watson (NATS) are members.

The board will focus on effective international outreach, internal and external education, and the active development of protocols, standards, and guidance for UAS identification and registration.