Bringing drones down to earth

Caterina Pino and Obinna Anyadike in IRIN: Disaster coverage now seems incomplete without amazing drone footage of the damage, accompanied by effusive media reports on the technological wizardry of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and their humanitarian application. But is that really the story? Here’s a look at the evolution needed for them to better fulfill their potential.

The advantage of UAVs is that they are a fraction of the cost of manned aircraft and the smallest can fit into the hand luggage of a humanitarian response team. They provide very high resolution imagery and can carry an array of sensors. “They provide extra information in the phase where you need a quick overview,” explained Arjan Stam, overall leader of international Urban Search-and-Rescue units in Nepal.

...Commonly used micro-UAVs, like the quadcopter DJI Phantom, has a flight time of under 25 minutes and doesn’t fly in high winds and bad weather. There are larger, more capable UAVs, but drones are far from always the answer. In many circumstances old-fashioned helicopters, manned aircraft and people doing assessments on foot are better options.

“If we prioritise using the cool new toys instead of choosing the collection platform that meets needs and constraints, we risk being less useful than we could be and probably slower,” said John Crowley, an affiliated researcher at Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. “[UAVs] can be amazing assets when they fit into a larger system that makes it safe, secure and legal to use them – [that requires] trained people, clear policies, and established protocols.”...

A fan copter, shot by WilliWiki, Wikimedia Commons,  under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license

Drones for good?

Louise Redvers in IRIN: Most commonly associated with spying and military missions, the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) – or drones – for humanitarian purposes is the subject of both hype and caution. Sceptics are wary of the ethical and practical implications, worried about human rights and security aspects and unconvinced by their capabilities and relevance.

But experts argue they could play an important role in disaster relief as well as having other useful civilian applications. A two-day event hosted in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) this weekend presented some potentially positive uses for UAVs in civilian and humanitarian settings offering big money prizes to the best ideas.

“Drones don’t have a great reputation,” admitted Patrick Meier, the director of social innovation at Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI), and a leading advocate for UAVs in the humanitarian sector, who helped judge the Dubai competition.

“Don’t forget in the past we used to associate satellites with the Cold War and the military, but that has now changed, thanks to the democratization of imagery. Hopefully as the public see more examples of drones doing good, of stopping animal poaching, of saving lives in search-and-rescue efforts or delivering medicines to remote parts of Africa, then perceptions will change,” said Meier, also the co-founder of the Digital Humanitarian Network (DHN), a membership platform for digital disaster response. ...

A NASA Pathfinder drone

Drones spread wings from war zones to disaster areas

Tony Mohr in SciDev.net: While lawmakers around the world struggle to keep up with the growth in the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) — commonly known as drones — innovation and community participation are changing how this weapon of modern warfare can be used for humanitarian purposes.

At a conference on UAVs in Australia (23-24 July), Patrick Meier, an international consultant in the field of conflict early warning and crisis mapping, noted that these remotely piloted aircrafts are bringing communities together to collect, analyse and use UAV data to prepare for natural disasters such as floods, hurricanes and landslides.

After Super Typhoon Haiyan struck the Philippines in November 2013, UAV projects helped in the relief efforts but they were uncoordinated and the data generated were not shared with affected communities, Meier noted.

To improve coordination in the use of UAVs, Meier co-founded the Humanitarian UAV Network (UAviators) to bridge humanitarian efforts and UAV groups internationally. The network has drafted a code of conduct on the responsible use of UAVs in humanitarian settings. It plans to roll out training and certification courses in the first half of 2015.

...He explains UAVs are now being used to create 2D and 3D maps of disaster-affected areas with more detail and in less time than is possible through satellites. “Aid and assistance can be deployed when and where these are needed because of such mapping,” he tells SciDev.Net....

IAI Heron 1 UAV in flight Location: NAVAL AIR STATION, FALLON, NEVADA (NV) UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (USA). From Department of Defense media

Drones zero in on Himalayan glaciers

Shahani Singh in SciDev.net: Drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are finding a role in the study of glaciers in the rugged and remote Himalayas. Using UAVs to study the Lirung glacier in Nepal’s Langtang region, scientists from the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands, and the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Research, Kathmandu, have shown that glacial melt water generated under debris is only marginal to the total amount of water generated in the Lirung catchment.

The Lirung glacier being at a comparatively low elevation is sensitive to temperature changes and data from it can give clues to the fate of debris-covered Himalayan glaciers that are higher up, if glo
bal warming persists at projected rates, says the study, to be published in the July 2014 issue of Remote Sensing of Environment.

The UAVs collected data from sub-surface areas in the highly inaccessible, debris-covered Lirung glacier and provided imagery at a resolution superior to satellite-derived data, says Walter Immerzeel, lead author of the study and assistant professor at the department of physical geography, University of Utrecht.

...The higher melt rates in supra-glacial lakes (lakes or ponds formed on top of glaciers) and ice cliffs place emphasis on studying ‘englacial hydrology,’ or water dynamics and mass change in the internal regions of a glacier. In the future the melt rate may be connected to or created by englacial conduits and voids, the study says.

UAV technology increases the cost-effectiveness and accuracy of research as traditional methods of measuring melt rates are labour intensive, time consuming and difficult to carry out, especially on thick layers of debris.....

Imja Lake and glacier in Nepal,  shot by Daniel Alton Byers, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 3.0 license

Drones give farmers eyes in the sky to check on crop progress

A press release from the University of Illinois: This growing season, crop researchers at the University of Illinois are experimenting with the use of drones – unmanned aerial vehicles – on the university’s South Farms. Dennis Bowman, a crop sciences educator with U. of I. Extension, is using two drones to take aerial pictures of crops growing in research plots on the farms.

Bowman intentionally made mistakes on one test plot – “areas where we didn’t apply enough nitrogen fertilizer, where we simulated mistakes in the applicator, where we shut the boom off for a short period of time or plugged it up and ran for a while,” Bowman said. “As the crop gets up and going, we’ll fly over it and see if we can detect those areas sooner than we could visually from the ground. (Watch the drone in action.)

“We’re also looking at doing some scans over our herbicide studies to see if the drone photography can help us identify where crops are stressed by postemergence herbicide applications.” For farmers, aerial photographs taken by drones offer a quick and easy way to check on the progress of crops and determine where they may need to replant or direct pesticide applications.

“I spent two summers as a commercial crop scout before I went into Extension, and walking through tasseling corn in the heat of summer is not a pleasant task,” Bowman said. “The odds of actually getting to the far end of that field on foot to see what’s going on are pretty slim. To get a bird’s-eye view of your crop, the drones offer a handy way to do it.”

Both drones Bowman is using are multirotor helicopters, or quadricopters. Bowman bought the first drone last fall. It’s a remote-controlled Phantom, manufactured by the company DJI. This spring, he bought a second aircraft, an A.R. Drone 2.0 with GPS produced by the French wireless electronics manufacturer Parrot. Using rechargeable lithium polymer batteries, each drone can make flights of about 10 to 15 minutes. The computers in the drones are similar to those used in smartphones...

Drones – unmanned aerial vehicles – scout wheat on the university’s South Farms. Photo by Brian L. Stauffer at the University of Illinois website

Drones may help predict tornadoes in the future

USA Today: Fourteen minutes is how much time a city or town has between a tornado warning and when a twister touches ground, according to the national average from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

But that warning time could increase to an hour with the help of data from unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly called drones, according to Jamey Jacob, an aerospace and engineering professor at Oklahoma State University.

Two days of violent weather have killed at least 30 people in Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee and the storms are forecast to continue. In the future, the information collected by drones could help meteorologists make better tornado forecasts, Jacob said.

Jacob is leading a team of students in designing and developing drones to fly into storms and collect a storm's pressure, temperature, humidity and wind speeds. "Right now, we don't have a really good way in determining which thunderstorms will develop into tornadoes," Jacob told USA TODAY Network. He added, "We're looking for the fingerprint of the tornado."

Oklahoma is in the middle of Tornado Alley. The state had 63 tornadoes last May alone, according to NOAA. As tornado season gears up again, the OSU team is building drones, which will weigh 35 pounds each and be able to fly up to 12 hours, Jacob said....

An F5 tornado in Manitoba, shot by , Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, Justin Hobson (Justin1569 at en.wikipedia), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

NASA radar watches over California's aging levees

Space Daily via NASA: One morning in 2008, research scientist Cathleen Jones of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., was flying over the San Andreas fault near San Francisco, testing a new radar instrument built at JPL. As the plane banked to make a turn, she looked down to see the Sacramento River delta, a patchwork of low-lying lands crisscrossed by levees.

Jones was using an instrument that can measure tiny movements of the ground on the scale of less than half an inch (less than a centimeter). It's called the Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR).

"It struck me that this new instrument might be perfect for monitoring movement of levees," said Jones. Checking the scientific literature, she found that nothing like that had been attempted before in the delta. She reported her idea to water managers at the California Department of Water Resources (DWR). She didn't know it, but she was at the beginning of a long-lived initiative to refine NASA technology for use in safeguarding the delta levees.

In the Sacramento River delta north of San Francisco Bay, islands, agricultural lands and communities below sea level are protected from surrounding water channels by more than 1,100 miles (1,800 kilometers) of dirt levees, many of which date back to the California Gold Rush. About two-thirds of all Californians and more than 4 million acres of irrigated farmland rely on the delta for water.

If a levee gives way, the results can be disastrous. A single 2004 levee failure created $90 million of damage and threatened the water supply to Southern California. However, the first warning that a levee is developing a structural problem can be a tiny soil deformation -- too small to be noticed by a visual inspection....

FEMA photo of a levee near Bombay Beach, California

Saudi researchers say drones could warn of desert flash floods

UPI: Researchers in Saudi Arabia say they're working on a drone system that could track potentially deadly floods in real time to sound an alarm before they hit.

Flash floods are a risk in the country; at least 13 people died when floods hit parts of Saudi Arabia earlier this month, and two years ago more than a hundred died when thunderstorms saturated land to the east of the Red Sea port of Jeddah and a flash flood hit the city without warning.

Christian Claudel at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology says a drone system could warn such cities of an impending flood and also predict the flood's path, NewScientist.com reported Wednesday...

A "flying eye" drone, shot by Flying Eye, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license