Disaster Management

Disasters are highly unfortunate and what adds to the misery is the late response to the victims. Each minutes is as precious as with loss of each minute , probability to lose lives increases multiple times. With drones there is considerable improvement to response / reaction time and disaster relief operations commence faster as they can be deployed quicker than conventional relief operations vehicles.

One of the key inputs that drones bring in quickly to the disaster relief management team is near real time data. The situation awareness empowers the relief teams to respond more effectively. Real time images collected via drones help relief management decision makers to assess whether the first responders should be sent it or it would put them in risky situation.

Let’s look at a few disasters and how drones help in relief operations:

Forest Fire -From Prediction > Detection > Fighting

Swarm of drones can easily be deployed over large forest areas to collect real time data about temperature, humidity, location, wind speed and direction.
The analyst use this data to predict if and when a forest fire may start. This helps them to mitigate the risk and respond to situations even before the forest fire are kindled.
Drones equipped with thermal detection sensors can easily detect the heat signatures and hence make the first responders more effective as they are able to locate the hotspots quickly.

Search and Rescue Operations

In an unfortunate event of earthquake or building collapse people are often stuck under rubble or debris. If not located in time, they are most likely to succumb to blood loss due to external injury or suffocation due to lack of oxygen.
Drones equipped by thermal sensors can easily detect human presence using heat generated by the body. Hence they can pinpoint the exact location and make rescue operations more effective and timely.
During floods the drones can take videos and pictures from high altitude and help analyst to arrive at the decision on whether the water will rise or recede.
It also helps the disaster teams to pre-empt situations and move the people out of flash floods way in time.