Project

Economic Impacts of Center for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS Center)

EDR Group (now EBP) was retained by Gryphon Sensors, LLC to provide an analysis of the economic impacts of the proposed United States Center for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS Center) in support of a $500 million grant application submitted by a Gryphon and a consortium of Central New York state stakeholders under the Governor’s Upstate Revitalization Initiative.
 

The application submitted for the UAS Center was successful, in part due to the quality and depth of the economic analysis contained in the proposal. Three categories of impacts are associated with the development of the proposed UAS Center: (a) construction of the multi-building UAS Center campus; (b) operation of the UAS Center; and (c) new investments expected in the region due to the development of the UAS Center, which could be either business expansion or firms locating in the region. Using the IMPLAN modeling system, EDR Group calibrated a multi-regional input-output model for (1) the Central Region of New York (Cayuga, Cortland, Madison, Onondaga, and Oswego counties); and (2) the rest of New York State.

As a central element of the analysis, EDR Group adjusted the industry production feature of the IMPLAN model to account for new industries for the development and support of UAS tracking technology. This was done by adding commodities, adjusting coefficients of retained as well as the added commodities and removing commodities from project functions of manufacturing sectors. Secondly, after the selected sectors were revised to portray the new industrial profiles, EDR Group edited industry data so that output, value-added components, and intermediated expenditures reflected the new-technology industries that are not yet in Central NY.