The World Protection Group: A Review of Drone Systems in Disaster Response

The use of Unmanned Aircraft (Drones) has grown in recent years in disaster response, allowing the analysis of areas that may be exposed to disasters of natural origin, in which it is being applied to make a better work on Estimation and Prevention with the updating of the exposed elements and determining factors of the territory, which will facilitate the elaboration of forecasts for the execution of risk mitigation measures in the event of natural phenomena.

Learn in this article more about the use of drone technology and its relationship with Disaster Response in our country.

In a study by the Bardo Institute, 910 state and local law enforcement officers in the US were found to have used drones for law enforcement or any other public safety operations.

The acquisition of these devices for civil use and remote sensing applications has greatly revolutionized Geographic Information Systems. However, these small aircraft can do more for us, and we are sometimes unaware of their rare applications.

The technology of the drones in obtaining geospatial information has come to the field mapping flights operated by these aircraft being able to generate products cartographical technical and scientific as orthomosaic, elevation models, contour lines between others, binding with the prospective, corrective and reactive components of Disaster Response.

Disaster Response is a social process whose ultimate goal is prevention, reduction and the permanent control of society's risk factors for disasters, as well as adequate preparation and response to disaster situations, considering national policies with special emphasis on those related to economic, environmental, security, national and territorial defense, sustainably.

Disaster Response is based on scientific research and information registration. It guides the policies, strategies and actions at all levels of government of a society to protect the life of the population and the assets of the people and the State.

At present, The World Protection Group, Inc. is the only executive security business that uses drones to help protect its customers from anyone who may wish to harm them. Only FAA commercial drone pilots are used by WPG.

• Voice box

• Spotlight

• Thermal Imaging

• Video Footage

Approach to inaccessible areas

The access of these small aircraft to areas devastated by landslides, mudslides, floods, tsunamis, earthquakes, fires, among others, allows faster access to inaccessible areas, as well as the search for possible victims.

Thanks to this, the territory can be evaluated, before access, and plan the forms of access and preventive measures to take into account. In disasters such as those that occurred in Haiti, Nepal or Fukushima, this technology has been used to evaluate the repercussions and impact of the accidents suffered from the sky. A video that speaks for itself, from a bird's eye view with drones.

Drones can also be used for damage assessment after catastrophic events to make preventive or operational decisions such as the reconstruction process that contribute to strengthening disaster response.

WPG’s drone security solution benefits from 4G/LTE/5G networks for the transmission of high definition standard (HD) images. Here are the highlights of it:

Live video monitoring: A drone can send directly to the cloud dashboard a high quality live video feed; from there, an operator has the option to share the stream with multiple remote stakeholders.

Thermal camera integration: In missions such as search and rescue, night tracking, firefighting, etc., thermal sensors are useful. Remote drone operators can relay thermal feeds from multiple drones and gain better situational awareness of an emerging situation, thereby assisting real-time ground operators.

Remote Control: The drone dashboard can be used by a single operator to control several drones, including each drone's camera gimbal. Such skill is very useful in activities that involve multi-perspective coverage of a wide area; for example, search and rescue, surveillance, manhunt, etc.

Map annotation and video file: An operator using dashboard has access to a map where all drones connected to the device are located in real-time. The operator will pin vital data collected by a drone directly onto the map during a flight. The function is useful during air missions for highlighting facts or other significant information.

Video storage on a stable, external, public/private cloud server is provided by the cloud-connected network so that videos recorded during a mission can be archived reliably.

Intelligent Mission Planning: Such a mission is a series of instructions telling a drone how to get to a position and what to do when it reaches the position. This function can be used in an emergency to send drones to a specific location.

Agnostic Hardware Platform: Drones are like tools. Depending on the task, different types of drones are required for law enforcement activities.