An Operational Check-List for Flying UAVs in Humanitarian Settings

The Humanitarian UAV Network (UAViators) has taken off much faster than I expected. More than 240 members in 32 countries have joined the network since it’s launch just a few weeks ago.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the number of humanitarian organizations that got in touch with me right after the launch. Many of them are just starting to explore this space. And I found it refreshing that every single one of them considers the case for humanitarian UAVs to be perfectly obvious. Almost all of the groups also mentioned how they would have made use of UAVs in recent disasters. Some are even taking steps now to set up rapid-response UAV teams.

My number one priority after launching the network was to start working on a Code of Conduct to guide the use of UAVs in humanitarian settings—the only one of it’s kind as far as I know. While I had initially sought to turn this Code of Conduct into a check-list, it became clear from the excellent feedback provided by members and the Advisory Board that we needed two separate documents. So my RA’s and I have created a more general Code of Conduct along with a more detailed operational check-list for flying UAVs in humanitarian settings. You’ll find the check-list here. Big thanks to Advisory Board member Gene Robinson for letting me draw on his excellent book for this check-list. Both the Code of Conduct and Check-List will continue to be updated on a monthly basis, so please do chime in and help us improve them.

One of my main goals for 2014 is to have the Code of Conduct officially and publicly endorsed by both UAV companies and humanitarian organizations alike. This may end up being a time-consuming process, but this endorsement is a must if the Code of Conduct is to become an established policy document. Another one of my goals is to organize a Humanitarian UAV Strategy Meeting in November that will bring together a select number of experts in Humanitarian UAVs with seasoned humanitarian professionals from the UN and Red Cross. The purpose of this meeting is to establish closer relationships between the humanitarian and UAV communities in order to facilitate coordination and information sharing during major disasters.

Also in the works for this year is a disaster response simulation with partners in the Philippines (including local government). The purpose of this simulation will be to rapidly deploy UAVs over a made-believe disaster area; then to upload the thousands of aerial images to MicroMappers to rapidly crowdsource the tagging of features-of-interest. Our (ambitious) hope is that the entire process can be done within a matter of hours. The simulation will help us identify the weak-links in our workflows. Our Filipino partners will also be using the resulting tagged images to create more accurate machine learning classifiers for automated feature detection. This will help them accelerate the analysis of aerial imagery during real disasters.

So stay tuned for updates, which will be posted on iRevolution and UAViators.

See also:

• How UAVs are Making a Difference in Disaster Response [link]
• Humanitarians Using UAVs for Post Disaster Recovery [link]
• Grassroots UAVs for Disaster Response [link]
• Using UAVs for Search & Rescue [link]
• Crowdsourcing Analysis of UAV Imagery for Search/Rescue [link]