Retrieving Relevant EU Drone Legislation with Citation Analysis

Can the retrieval of relevant unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) legislation be automated? In this article, references from and to EU legislation are used to create an overview that is subsequently compared to legislation considered relevant by subject-matter experts. The overlap between the results of the citation analysis and the expert overview is promising. Additionally, an approach was proposed and tested where, first, a relatively large number of laws were identified and, second, the laws that were considered relevant were selected. The findings reveal that this approach was successful at retrieving the majority of relevant laws. The results are relevant to researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and laypeople searching for relevant EU legislation on UAS.