Hurricane Dorian
From August 28th through September 8th, 2019, Hurricane Dorian caused utter devastation from the Bahamas up the coast of the United States to Nova Scotia. The damage caused by the storm came from a multitude of different hurricane effects including storm surges, extreme winds, tornadoes, and waterspouts. These dangerous natural disasters caused roadways to be torn up, power grids to be wiped out, neighborhoods to be pulverized, water systems to be compromised, and even the tragic loss of human life. Many of the damage is unable to be assessed quickly due to the inability to reach locations on land, and a lack of helicopters available. This is where drone support comes into play.
How can drones help?
When utilizing drones for emergency response, many aspects of the response are either sped up or made to be more efficient. In storm surge affected areas, people are often forced to climb to the roofs of their homes and wait for someone to come help them. While helicopters have the payload capacity to rescue families, drones have the ability to cover far more ground faster while sending data indicating the location of victims to rescue hubs in real-time. In the event of an overcast or foggy day, drones are able to utilize thermal payloads in order to find those eagerly awaiting rescue. When tornadoes and waterspouts destroy roadways, drones can be deployed ahead of caravans to livestream the route they are attempting to take so drivers know if they are able to continue on safely. Drones are not a sole solution to emergency response, but a valuable and effective addition to every emergency response team.
How can we get there?
There are two main roadblocks in the way of widely using drones for emergency storm response: detect and avoid systems (DAA) and an unmanned traffic management system (UTM). The first, DAA, is not only a problem for this application of drones. It is also the difficulty of BVLOS, as there is only one sky to fly all types of aircraft in – from recreational quadcopters to passenger airliners. Currently, there are cooperative aircraft and uncooperative aircraft. The meaning of “uncooperative” here is that other pilots cannot see such aircraft in during flight; this creates an extremely dangerous environment for humans and equipment alike. Until there is a widely used system, it will be difficult to get clearance from the FAA to fly drones in airspace occupied by manned aircraft as the safety risk is too high. The second of the roadblocks, UTM, is related to a DAA system implementation, but is more focused on human ground operations than on-board technology. In order to create a functioning UTM, UAV’s will need remote identification similar to ADS-B for manned aircraft. Though these seem like large feats, they will be accomplished before the blink of an eye and emergency storm responses will be transformed.