The University of Portsmouth has helped organise the UK's first post-disaster search and rescue experiment for drone applications, as part of its ongoing collaboration with the UN World Food Programme.
Using search-drones in emergency situations such as floods, droughts, storms or earthquakes, enables helicopters and planes to be re-deployed for rescuing people and delivering essential aid. Drones also have low operating costs and can be deployed quickly, even in difficult weather conditions, but little is known about the most effective ways to use them over large areas.
The UN WFP has been developing the use of Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (UAS, aka drones) since 2017 to improve responses to humanitarian crises, encouraging collaboration among first responders and government stakeholders worldwide.
In November, University of Portsmouth researchers played a key role in a flood disaster simulation based around a lake in Mozambique. Using drones they searched for volunteers who needed rescuing, as well as locating local hazards, such as crocodiles.
Drone photo of a local hazard. Credit Patrick McKay, UN WFP.
This year the team, led by Professor Richard Teeuw, will take part in a follow-on experiment at a former RAF base in the Chilmark area, near Salisbury. The six-day event will take place from Thursday 9 to Tuesday 14 June, and welcome around 20 drone pilots from Africa, Europe, the UK, and Canada.
The University of Portsmouth has been running training courses in Crisis and Disaster Management for over 10 years
"The University of Portsmouth has been running training courses in Crisis and Disaster Management for over 10 years, with annual emergency response simulation events", said Professor Teeuw from the Centre for Applied Geosciences.
"It also hosts a centre of excellence for space technology applications, including drones, so this research with the United Nations, into ways of using drones to save lives during disasters, is an effective partnership."
During the experiment in Salisbury, participants will be testing various types of drone survey technologies, from colour photos to thermal infra-red images, looking for more effective ways to find people.
We're working to develop a set of best practice and Standard Operating Procedure documents to guide future emergency teams to most effectively identify the location of people needing rescue
WFP Drones Team Project Manager, Elizabeth Bourke, added: "In the first phase in Mozambique we already made some valuable findings on how to most effectively use drones in a wide area search to find the location of people needing rescue. In this second phase, we are focusing on the use of machine learning to even more rapidly detect people in a large-scale emergency.
"Through our collaboration with the University of Portsmouth we're working to develop these tools as well as a set of best practice and Standard Operating Procedure documents to guide future emergency teams to most effectively identify the location of people needing rescue. Doing that will mean we can use the rescue helicopters and boats more efficiently and ultimately save more lives."
