Paper Type
Complete
Abstract
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles are now widely used across business, government, and recreational contexts, creating new challenges for incident response and digital forensics. While previous forensics research has largely focused on the extraction of technical data from UAV systems, minimal empirical work has examined how UAV incidents are handled in real-world settings or what challenges incident handlers face during this response. To address this gap, this paper reports findings from an in-person focus group with UAV and counter-UAV practitioners from industry and government organizations in the United States. Using qualitative analysis, several key challenges are identified, including situational awareness and airspace visibility, fragmented reporting and interorganizational coordination, forensic and attribution limitations, legal and policy gaps, and shortfalls in training and operational capacity. The research extends socio-technical incident response research to the UAV domain by providing practitioner-driven insight into UAV incident response and highlighting opportunities to strengthen incident response in this domain.
Paper Number
1339
Recommended Citation
Grispos, George; Elson, Joel; Doctor, Austin C.; and Cubukcu, Suat, "Organizational and Socio-Technical Challenges in UAV Incidents: Evidence from a Practitioner Focus Group" (2026). AMCIS 2026 Proceedings. 7.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2026/sig_sec/sig_sec/7
Organizational and Socio-Technical Challenges in UAV Incidents: Evidence from a Practitioner Focus Group
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles are now widely used across business, government, and recreational contexts, creating new challenges for incident response and digital forensics. While previous forensics research has largely focused on the extraction of technical data from UAV systems, minimal empirical work has examined how UAV incidents are handled in real-world settings or what challenges incident handlers face during this response. To address this gap, this paper reports findings from an in-person focus group with UAV and counter-UAV practitioners from industry and government organizations in the United States. Using qualitative analysis, several key challenges are identified, including situational awareness and airspace visibility, fragmented reporting and interorganizational coordination, forensic and attribution limitations, legal and policy gaps, and shortfalls in training and operational capacity. The research extends socio-technical incident response research to the UAV domain by providing practitioner-driven insight into UAV incident response and highlighting opportunities to strengthen incident response in this domain.
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