Americans should commend U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and Federal Aviation Administrator Michael Huerta for leading a federal effort to safely integrate unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) into the National Airspace System. Clarified regulations that went into effect Aug. 29 represent great progress on this integration that will help construction and building operations optimize the benefits of drone technology—but the work still is incomplete.

The new regulations are a major advancement in the liberalization of the skies for small, unmanned aircraft. They also set an excellent foundation for improving future regulations. They will encourage commercial drone operation at scale and should have a huge economic impact. And with time, the empirical data collected during expanded operations will provide a basis for lowering the regulatory barriers even further for the smallest class of drones, the micro category, which are inherently safer than larger aircraft.