Project CAELUS-2 (Care & Equity - Logistics UAS Scotland) seeks to demonstrate how drone technology can enhance access to essential medical supplies, particularly in rural parts of Scotland, and establish what would be the UKs first national distribution network serviced by drones. The project is part funded through UKRI Future Flight Fund under Phase 3 which focuses on demonstration. With approximately 20% of Scotland's population living in remote or rural areas spread across 94% of the land mass, service delivery can encounter constraints which contributes to treatment inequity. NHS-Scotland views the adoption of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) as an opportunity to transform the patient experience and reduce the impact of traffic congestion and CO2 emissions. A recent report by PWC examined the impact of drones to the UK's economy, jobs, productivity and quality of life and estimates the impact by 2030 to be 16 billion pounds in cost savings, an additional 42 billion to GDP, the creation of over 6,000 drone sector jobs and in the region of 76,000 drones across UK skies. As NHS-Scotland emerges from the pandemic with focus on the remobilisation, recovery and redesign of services, novel use of UAS will disrupt models of service delivery and transform patient pathways, moving it closer to the patient and a homely care setting. CAELUS-2 will carry out live and digital flight demonstrations, proving that operating a network of multiple drones can integrate safely with existing flight operations and therefore regulatory needs and social acceptance issues can be resolved. The project team, led by AGS Airports and formed of 16 partners, including NHS-Scotland bring a diverse range of technical and industry experience and expertise to support CAELUS-2 in achieving its aims and objectives. The project has three main workstreams: \*Developing new concepts for drones to integrate with others using Scotland's airways \*Demonstration of these concepts through implementation and operation of physical and digital flight demonstrations of drone deliveries by multiple drone operators and an innovative digital twin model to optimise the network. \*Demonstration of innovative new ways of proactively engaging with communities, airspace users and potential customers. With NHS-Scotland embedded in CAELUS-2 this ensures it will be an exemplar innovation project, addressing the remobilisation challenges in a once-for-Scotland approach.

Project CAELUS-2 (Care & Equity - Logistics UAS Scotland) seeks to demonstrate how drone technology can enhance access to essential medical supplies, particularly in rural parts of Scotland, and establish what would be the UKs first national distribution network serviced by drones. The project is part funded through UKRI Future Flight Fund under Phase 3 which focuses on demonstration. With approximately 20% of Scotland's population living in remote or rural areas spread across 94% of the land mass, service delivery can encounter constraints which contributes to treatment inequity. NHS-Scotland views the adoption of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) as an opportunity to transform the patient experience and reduce the impact of traffic congestion and CO2 emissions. A recent report by PWC examined the impact of drones to the UK's economy, jobs, productivity and quality of life and estimates the impact by 2030 to be 16 billion pounds in cost savings, an additional 42 billion to GDP, the creation of over 6,000 drone sector jobs and in the region of 76,000 drones across UK skies. As NHS-Scotland emerges from the pandemic with focus on the remobilisation, recovery and redesign of services, novel use of UAS will disrupt models of service delivery and transform patient pathways, moving it closer to the patient and a homely care setting. CAELUS-2 will carry out live and digital flight demonstrations, proving that operating a network of multiple drones can integrate safely with existing flight operations and therefore regulatory needs and social acceptance issues can be resolved. The project team, led by AGS Airports and formed of 16 partners, including NHS-Scotland bring a diverse range of technical and industry experience and expertise to support CAELUS-2 in achieving its aims and objectives. The project has three main workstreams: \*Developing new concepts for drones to integrate with others using Scotland's airways \*Demonstration of these concepts through implementation and operation of physical and digital flight demonstrations of drone deliveries by multiple drone operators and an innovative digital twin model to optimise the network. \*Demonstration of innovative new ways of proactively engaging with communities, airspace users and potential customers. With NHS-Scotland embedded in CAELUS-2 this ensures it will be an exemplar innovation project, addressing the remobilisation challenges in a once-for-Scotland approach.

This project brings together expertise and skills from large and small organisations, universities and non-profit research and technology organisations to demonstrate the technological and socio-economic viability of a drone-enabled distribution network for medical items such as organs, blood products, high-value medicines and medical consumables over Scotland. The goal is to design an innovative logistic network capable of providing increased responsiveness and capillarity of medical delivery in urban and rural geography uniquely found in Scotland, while ensuring lower costs, reliability, robustness, safety and regulatory compliance. A digital demonstrator will be created with computer models of the different components of this system of systems, such as a digital model of the drones, the ground infrastructure needed to recharge the vehicles and the system used to manage the traffic of drones while flying. By exploring various operating conditions and different configurations of the network and by ensuring that appropriate market analyses and public perception are accurately taken into consideration, a digital blue print of the drone delivery network will be created connecting potentially hundreds of hospitals, pathology laboratories, distribution centres and GP units. The integration of digital technology demonstration with market analyses, stakeholder engagement and assessment of public perception is a key objective of the project as these elements are recognised barriers to adoption of drone services that need to be addressed to be able to reach a viable and accepted solution and therefore develop this emerging sector which is expected to bring a significant social and economic benefit to Scotland. Regulatory challenges are another key focus area, URANOS aims to address these by conducting a series of live trials aimed to inform the regulatory pathways in the definition of protocols and rules for safe operation of autonomous drones in the same airspace as civil transport aircraft. Despite focussing on such a specific use case as medical delivery and being tailored to the specific geographical region of Scotland, URANOS could also have impact on a larger scale. In addition to the healthcare sector benefits, URANOS will open the way to the deployment of drone-enabled logistics in other sectors of the economy. It will change the way airspace is managed and utilised by manned and unmanned vehicles and will favour the realisation of sustainability goals, such as the carbon neutrality of distribution networks, supporting the energy transition and contributing towards the Scottish Government's target of a 75% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2045\.