About DownScan

DownScan is a flight planning tool that estimates the total number of people, and the dollar value of property and people at risk of damage or injury under your prospective flight path. Using DownScan, you can adjust your routing to minimize the potential of encounters with people and high value assets, and right size your third-party liability insurance requirements.

What is a DownScan Value ?

DownScan is a proprietary tool that estimates the total number of people, and the potential dollar value risk of encounters with people and property on the ground beneath any point on a specific aircraft’s route or pathway. It is designed to help aircraft operators explore and compare alternative routings for the purposes of deciding whether or not to undertake a particular flight or mission, managing or minimizing risk to third-parties by choosing less or least risky routes, and informing decisions about how much third-party liability insurance to buy. Government certifiers and regulators can use DownScan as a data point in determining the relative safety acceptability of a proposed aircraft operation. And insurers can use DownScan values for underwriting analysis and pricing purposes.

DownScan values are automatically computed using the best publicly available data on populations and local real estate valuations, including census data. The total asset and human life values at risk beneath a particular point on the aircraft pathway are adjusted according to physical and performance of the specific aircraft. For example smaller, slower, more frangible aircraft will cause less damage or injury than larger, harder, faster ones. These calculations are based on sophisticated formulae developed by the Department of Defense, NASA, FAA, and research institutions, developed through extensive testing and research on dedicated DOD Test Ranges.

Because of the constantly moving and changing activities of populations and fluctuating real estate values at a particular moment, DownScan values can be an estimate only, but are an informed estimate based on the most reliable, most granular data available at a given time.

The DownScan Developers

Frank L. Frisbie

Aviation consultant, former FAA, DOD, and industry NAS Senior Executive. Frank has 55 years of experience in ATC/ATM spanning the full design, development, implementation, sustainment and replacement cycle of all NAS infrastructure elements, including a professional career in FAA culminating in the position of NAS Program Director and Acting Associate Administrator of Development and Logistics. Frank also served as a senior executive of Northrop Grumman. Frank holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering (BEE) from Manhattan College, NY and a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from American University, DC. An Honorary Member of ATCA and recipient of the Glen Gilbert Award, Mr. Frisbie is a frequent contributor to the Journal of Air Traffic Control.

Suzette Matthews

Principal, Washington Progress Group LLC, an aviation attorney. She represented major foreign and domestic airlines before the CAB, FAA, DOT, and Federal Courts. She served twenty years as Executive VP and General Counsel, and Director of the Air Traffic Control Association (ATCA), and Editor of ATCA's Journal of Air Traffic Control; ten years was a Senior Subject Matter Expert to the FAA Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO) and successor. She is the author of numerous published articles on aviation law, technology policy, unmanned aircraft issues, and public-private partnerships. She received the Aviation Week and Space Technology Laurel Award (2001), the Air Traffic Control Association Clifford Burton Award (2004) and Chairman’s Citation of Merit (2012). Her company Washington Progress Group LLC was recipient of the ATCA Small and Disadvantaged Business Award (2016) for thought leadership on UAS issues. Ms. Matthews holds a B.A. With Distinction and Phi Beta Kappa from Cornell University, and a Juris Doctor degree from Cornell Law School, and is a graduate of the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership. She is a Member of the Bars of Virginia and the District of Columbia.

Karen Risa Robbins

Karen has played a key role in the Unmanned Aircraft Systems arena. She brokered and provided legal and operations support to the $165 million dollar ERAST Alliance, a nine year partnership with industry to develop and flight-test high altitude long endurance (HALE) UAS. She was a primary catalyst for the formation of the UAS National Industry Team (UNITE) in 2002. She worked closely with leaders of major UAS manufacturers to convince NASA, the FAA and DOD to address integration of UAS into the national airspace, resulting in the Access 5 Program, for which she negotiated the $101M legal agreement. In 2004, working with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and DHS, she facilitated an interagency planning exercise under the JPDO that culminated in a report entitled The Impact of UAVs on the Next Generation Air Transportation System. She architected NASA’s Other Transactions Authority (OTA) contracting practices, and negotiated and administered OTA agreements worth hundreds of millions of dollars, including the NextGen Institute. An expert in public-private partnership (and recipient of numerous awards), she was recruited to orchestrate partner relations for the Next Generation Air Transportation System program. Outside of drones, she has worked with thought leaders in the computer field, notably Dr. Douglas Engelbart. In 2018, she was the Program Manager for the Engelbart Symposium, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the landmark demo that spawned personal interactive computing. She advises companies and nonprofits on networked solutions to complex problems.

David E. Schaffer

WPG Principal, aviation attorney. David has over 40 years of experience in aviation government relations and policy. He served as Attorney-Advisor to the Civil Aeronautics Board, which was an independent federal regulatory body, and for twenty years was Senior Counsel and Staff Director of the US House of Representatives Aviation Subcommittee. During his time with the US House, David was instrumental in passing twenty major aviation bills including several bills dealing with aviation safety and security, and seven bills reauthorizing the FAA. After retiring from Congressional Service in 2004, David continued his work on issues related to airports, NextGen, and UAS integration in the NAS. He became a policy consultant to both the FAA and the Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO). While there, he wrote extensively on airport capacity issues and unmanned aircraft privacy issues. He was also deeply involved advising the JPDO, and continues to advise private sector clients on Congressional relations and policy issues related to airports, the environment, governance, and air traffic control modernization.

Vitali Volovoi

An independent consultant in the area of the Internet of Things, risk, reliability, and the dynamic interactions of complex systems. He collaborates with Mitek Analytics, consults for Logistics Management Institute, and serves as a member of the NASA Statistical Engineering team. His recent projects include development of data analytics for fleet sustainment of the U.S. Air Force and the reliability of the Hubble Space Telescope gyros for NASA. In the past he also worked on condition-based maintenance of gas turbines for Siemens; quantitative risk assessment of the Space Shuttle wiring for NASA; air transportation safety analysis for NASA. He has received two NASA Engineering and Safety Group Achievement Awards, a NASA Engineering and Safety Technical Excellence Award, and the Best Tutorial award at the Reliability and Maintenance Symposium (RAMS). He has a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology, and a University Diploma in Mechanics and Mathematics from Moscow State University.