Patrick Meier's Posts (59)

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3689699697?profile=original

Please find here the World Bank's official Call for Interest to field-test UAVs for a range of humanitarian applications in the Asia Pacific. Given that I'm part of the WB Team that is organizing and evaluating these field tests, I am not in position to reply to any questions related to this call for interest. Please follow the guidelines in the link above should you have any questions and note that the new deadline is Sept 26th.

Thank you!

 

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In September 2015, we were invited by our partner Kathmandu University to provide them and other key stakeholders with professional hands-on training to help them scale the positive impact of their humanitarian efforts following the devastating earthquakes. More specifically, our partners were looking to get trained on how to use aerial robotics solutions (drones) safely and effectively to support their disaster risk reduction and early recovery efforts. So we co-created Kathmandu Flying Labs to ensure the long-term sustainability of our capacity building efforts. Kathmandu Flying Labs is kindly hosted by our lead partner, Kathmandu University (KU). This is already well known. What is hardly known, however, is what happened after we left the country.

Our Flying Labs are local innovation labs used to transfer both relevant skills and appropriate robotics solutions sustainably to outstanding local partners who need these the most. The co-creation of these Flying Labs include both joint training and applied projects customized to meet the specific needs & priorities of our local partners. In Nepal, we provided both KU and Kathmandu Living Labs (KLL) with the professional hands-on training they requested. What's more, thanks to our Technology Partner DJI, we were able to transfer 10 DJI Phantoms (aerial robotics solutions) to our Nepali partners (6 to KU and 4 to KLL). In addition, thanks to another Technology Partner, Pix4D, we provided both KU and KLL with free licenses of the Pix4D software and relevant training so they could easily process and analyze the imagery they captured using their DJI platforms. Finally, we carried out joint aerial surveys of Panga, one of the towns hardest-hit by the 2015 Earthquake. Joint projects are an integral element of our capacity building efforts. These projects serve to reinforce the training and enable our local partners to create immediate added value using aerial robotics. This important phase of Kathmandu Flying Labs is already well documented.

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What is less known, however, is what KU did with the technology and software after we left Nepal. Indeed, the results of this next phase of the Flying Labs process (during which we provide remote support as needed) has not been shared widely, until now. KU's first order of business was to actually finish the joint project we had started with them in Panga. It turns out that our original aerial surveys there were actually incomplete, as denoted by the red circle below.

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But because we had taken the time to train our partners and transfer both our skills and the robotics technologies, the outstanding team at KU's School of Engineering returned to Panga to get the job done without needing any further assistance from us at WeRobotics. They filled the gap:

Map_After

The KU team didn't stop there. They carried out a detailed aerial survey of a nearby hospital to create the 3D model below (at the hospital's request). They also created detailed 3D models of the university and a nearby temple that had been partially damaged by the 2015 earthquakes. Furthermore, they carried out additional disaster damage assessments in Manekharka and Sindhupalchowk, again entirely on their own.

 

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 Yesterday, KU kindly told us about their collaboration with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Together, they are conducting a study to determine the ecological flow of Kaligandaki river, one of the largest rivers in Nepal. According to KU, the river's ecosystem is particularly "complex as it includes aquatic invertebrates, flora, vertebrates, hydrology, geo-morphology, hydraulics, sociology-cultural and livelihood aspects." The Associate Dean at KU's School of Engineering wrote "We are deploying both traditional and modern technology to get the information from ground including UAVs. In this case we are using the DJI Phantoms," which "reduced largely our field investigation time. The results are interesting and promising." I look forward to sharing these results in a future blog post.

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Lastly, KU's Engineering Department has integrated the use of the robotics platforms directly into their courses, enabling Geomatics Engineering students to use the robots as part of their end-of-semester projects. In sum, KU has done truly outstanding work following our capacity building efforts and deserve extensive praise. (Alas, it seems that KLL has made little to no use of the aerial technologies or the software since our training 10 months ago).

Several months after the training in Nepal, we were approached by a British company that needed aerial surveys of specific areas for a project that the Nepal Government had contracted them to carry out. So they wanted to hire us for this project. We proposed instead that they hire our partners at Kathmandu Flying Labs since the latter are more than capable to carry out the surveys themselves. In other words, we actively drive business opportunities to Flying Labs partners. Helping to create local jobs and local businesses around robotics as a service is one of our key goals and the final phase of the Flying Labs framework.

So when we heard last week that USAID's Global Development Lab was looking to hire a foreign company to carry out aerial surveys for a food security project in Nepal, we jumped on a call with USAID to let them know about the good work carried out by Kathmandu Flying Labs. We clearly communicated to our USAID colleagues that there are perfectly qualified Nepali pilots who can carry out the same aerial surveys. USAID's Development Lab will be meeting with Kathmandu Flying Labs during their next visit in September.

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On a related note, one of the participants who we trained in September was hired soon after by Build Change to support the organization's shelter programs by producing Digital Surface Models (DSMs) from aerial images captured using DJI platforms. More recently, we heard from another student who emailed us with the following: "I had an opportunity to participate in the Humanitarian UAV Training mission in Nepal. It’s because of this training I was able learn how to fly drones and now I can conduct aerial Survey on my own with any hardware.  I would like to thank you and your team for the knowledge transfer sessions."

This same student (who graduated from KU) added: "The workshop that your team did last time gave us the opportunity to learn how to fly and now we are handling some professional works along with major research. My question to you is 'How can young graduates from developing countries like ours strengthen their capacity and keep up with their passion on working with technology like UAVs [...]? The immediate concern for a graduate in Nepal is a simple job where he can make some money for him and prove to his family that he has done something in return for all the investments they have been doing upon him [...]'.

 KU campus sign

This is one of several reasons why our approach at WeRobotics is not limited to scaling the positive impact of local humanitarian, development, environmental and public health projects. Our demand-driven Flying Labs model goes the extra (aeronautical) mile to deliberately create local jobs and businesses. Our Flying Labs partners want to make money off the skills and technologies they gain from WeRobotics. They want to take advantage of the new career opportunities afforded by these new AI-powered robotics solutions. And they want their efforts to be sustainable.

In Nepal, we are now interviewing the KU graduate who posed the question above because we're looking to hire an outstanding and passionate Coordinator for Kathmandu Flying Labs. Indeed, there is much work to be done as we are returning to Nepal in coming months for three reasons: 1) Our local partners have asked us to provide them with the technology and training they need to carry out large scale mapping efforts using long-distance fixed-wing platforms; 2) A new local partner needs to create very high-resolution topographical maps of large priority areas for disaster risk reduction and planning efforts, which requires the use of a fixed-wing platform; 3) We need to meet with KU's Business Incubation Center to explore partnership opportunities since we are keen to help incubate local businesses that offer robotics as a service in Nepal.

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Our world is experiencing an unprecedented shift from manually controlled technologies to increasingly intelligent and autonomous systems powered by artificial intelligence (AI). I believe that this radical shift in both efficiency and productivity can have significant positive social impact when it is channeled responsibly, locally and sustainably.

This is why my team and I founded WeRobotics, the only organization fully dedicated to accelerating and scaling the positive impact of humanitarian, development and environmental projects through the appropriate use of AI-powered robotics solutions. I’m thrilled to announce that the prestigious Rockefeller Foundation shares our vision—indeed, the Foundation has just awarded WeRobotics a start-up grant to take Humanitarian Robotics to the next level. We’re excited to leverage the positive power of robotics to help build a more resilient world in line with Rockefeller’s important vision.

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Aerial Robotics (drones/UAVs) represent the first wave of robotics to impact humanitarian sectors by disrupting traditional modes of data collection and cargo delivery. Both timely data and the capacity to act on this data are integral to aid, development and environmental projects. This is why we are co-creating and co-hosting global network of “Flying Labs”; to transfer appropriate aerial robotics solutions and relevant skills to outstanding local partners in developing countries who need these the most.

Our local innovation labs also present unique opportunities for our Technology Partners—robotics companies and institutes. Indeed, our growing network of Flying Labs offer a multitude of geographical, environmental and social conditions for ethical social good projects and responsible field-testing; from high-altitude glaciers and remote archipelagos experiencing rapid climate change to dense urban environments in the tropics subject to intense flooding and endangered ecosystems facing cascading environmental risks.

The Labs also provide our Technology Partners with direct access to local knowledge, talent and markets, and in turn provide local companies and entrepreneurs with facilitated access to novel robotics solutions. In the process, our local partners become experts in different aspects of robotics, enabling them to become service providers and drive new growth through local start-up’s and companies. The Labs thus seek to offer robotics-as-a-service across multiple local sectors. As such, the Labs follow a demand-driven social entrepreneurship model designed to catalyze local businesses while nurturing learning and innovation.

Of course, there’s more to robotics than just aerial robotics. This is why we’re also exploring the use of AI-powered terrestrial and maritime robotics for data collection and cargo delivery. We’ll add these solutions to our portfolio as they become more accessible in the future. In the meantime, sincerest thanks to the Rockefeller Foundation for their trust and invaluable support. Big thanks also to our outstanding Board of Directors and to key colleagues for their essential feed-back and guidance.

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Recently published peer-reviewed scientific article:

Aerial imagery captured via unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is playing an increasingly important role in disaster response. Unlike satellite imagery, aerial imagery can be captured and processed within hours rather than days. In addition, the spatial resolution of aerial imagery is an order of magnitude higher than the imagery produced by the most sophisticated commercial satellites today. Both the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the European Commission's Joint Research Center (JRC) have noted that aerial imagery will inevitably present a big data challenge.

The purpose of this article is to get ahead of this future challenge by proposing a hybrid crowdsourcing and real-time machine learning solution to rapidly process large volumes of aerial data for disaster response in a time-sensitive manner. Crowdsourcing can be used to annotate features of interest in aerial images (such as damaged shelters and roads blocked by debris). These human-annotated features can then be used to train a supervised machine learning system to learn to recognize such features in new unseen images.

In this article, we describe how this hybrid solution for image analysis can be implemented as a module (i.e., Aerial Clicker) to extend an existing platform called Artificial Intelligence for Disaster Response (AIDR), which has already been deployed to classify microblog messages during disasters using its Text Clicker module and in response to Cyclone Pam, a category 5 cyclone that devastated Vanuatu in March 2015. The hybrid solution we present can be applied to both aerial and satellite imagery and has applications beyond disaster response such as wildlife protection, human rights, and archeological exploration.

As a proof of concept, we recently piloted this solution using very high-resolution aerial photographs of a wildlife reserve in Namibia to support rangers with their wildlife conservation efforts (SAVMAP project). The results suggest that the platform we have developed to combine crowdsourcing and machine learning to make sense of large volumes of aerial images can be used for disaster response.

http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/big.2014.0064

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The 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck southern Taiwan shortly before 4 in the morning on Saturday, February 6th. Later in the day, aerial robots were used to capture areal images of the disaster damage, like the one below.

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And before the day was out, Taiwan's National Cheng Kung University used the aerial images to create the 3D models here, which can also be viewed in Virtual Reality.

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Video: Crisis Mapping Nepal with UAVs

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I had the honor of spearheading this disaster recovery UAV mission in Nepal a few weeks ago as part of Kathmandu Flying Labs. This Flying Lab is the first of several local UAV innovation labs that I am setting up with friends and colleagues in disaster-prone countries around the world. The short film documentary above was launched just minutes ago at the 2015 Web Summit and describes how we teamed up with local partners in Kathmandu to make use of aerial robotics (UAVs) to map Nepal’s recovery efforts. 

Please help us share this story of drones for good widely. Thank you!

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Recent scientific research has shown that aerial imagery captured during a single 20-minute UAV flight can take more than half-a-day to analyze. We flew several dozen flights during the World Bank’s humanitarian UAV mission in response to Cyclone Pam earlier this year. The imagery we captured would’ve taken a single expert analyst a minimum 20 full-time workdays to make sense of. In other words, aerial imagery is already a Big Data problem. So my team and I are using human computing (crowdsourcing), machine computing (artificial intelligence) and computer vision to make sense of this new Big Data source. Click here to read more.

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The Humanitarian UAV Mission I spearheaded in Nepal a couple weeks ago was just featured in the Washington Post. For more information on the mission and many more pictures, please see this write-up: Aerial Robotics in the Land of Buddha. This mission is an important milestone for Kathmandu Flying Labs, a UAV innovation lab I'm setting up in Nepal with local partners. More on this in the links above. I just gave a Keynote at UAV Expo 2015 this week in which I highlighted this project and invited UAV experts to partner with us in future missions to Nepal and elsewhere. So please consider this an open invitation to the DIYdrones community as well. If you are interested in applying your expertise for the better good, then do please get in touch: patrick@UAViators.org. More on our humanitarian efforts at UAViators. Thank you!

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A colleague of mine just returned from overseas where he flew a UAV as part of an independent exploratory project. He did so with permission and also engaged directly with local communities in the process—as per the guidelines listed in theHumanitarian UAV Code of Conduct. He subsequently sent me this aerial video footage of a camp, which he recorded using a DJI Phantom 2 Vision+.

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The analysis of aerial imagery for humanitarian & development purposes is an active area of research at 
UAViators. He thus kindly gave me permission to share this footage with colleague Matt Shroyer so that we could explore the possibility of creating a mosaic and 3D model from the video. Incidentally, the image below is the highest resolution and most recent satellite image available of the camp on Google Maps. As you can tell, the satellite image is very much out of date.

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And here is the mosaic, which Matt kindly produced by taking hundreds of screenshots of the aerial video footage (click to enlarge):

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A close up:

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We then explored the possibility of creating a 3D model of the camp using the screenshots and SketchFab. The results are displayed below (click to enlarge). The numbers are annotations we added to provide relevant information on the camp. Perhaps in the future we’ll be able to add photographs & videos (captured from hand-held cameras) and other types of data to the 3D model.

Click here to view the 3D model, fly-throughs, and more. 

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In June 2014, a joint USAID and USGS team used a small UAV to map artisanal diamond mining sites in Western Guinea. The purpose of this UAV mission was to support the “Kimberley Process (KP), an international initiative aimed at preventing the flow of conflict diamonds.” Adhering to the Process’s regulations is proving challenging for “countries whose diamonds are produced through artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM).” These mines are “often remote and spread over vast territories, and the diamonds found are frequently sold into informal networks,” which makes it “very difficult to track production—a key requirement of the KP.” National governments have recently taken important steps to formalize ASM by “registering miners, delineating mining zones, and establishing a legal flow chain through which production is intended to move. The ability to map and monitor artisanal diamond mining sites is a necessary step towards achieving formalization. Doing so helps to identify where mining is taking place, the extent of activities, the amount of production, and how the activity and production change over time.”

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While the US Geological Survey (USGS) has been using satellite imagery to “identify ASM activities and estimate the production in diamond mining zones through-out the region,” satellite imagery presents a number of limitations. These include “atmospheric constraints (cloud cover, haze, smoke, etc.)” as well as “temporal resolutions that fail to capture the dynamic nature of ASM sites and spatial resolutions that can be inadequate for identifying fine-scale features.” Hence the use of UAVs to “support USAID’s Property Rights and Artisanal Diamond Development (PRADD) project’s efforts to formalize ASM in Guinea.” USAID and USGS deployed a joint team in June 2014 to “create detailed site maps and generate very-high resolution digital elevation models (DEMs) of the region to better inform diamond production evaluations.” The team flew a DJI Phantom 1, a multi-rotor UAV (pictured below) to “collect data at seven artisanal diamond mining sites in the Forecariah Prefecture of western Guinea.”  The DJI UAV was flown by Visual Line of Site (VLOS).

Click here to continue reading

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Unmanned aircraft can be put to effective use in humanitarian situations, but a code of conduct is needed to make sure they are used safely and efficiently

UK Guardian, July 28, 2015

After typhoon Haiyan wreaked havoc on the Philippines in 2013, killing more than 6,300 people and destroying farms and villages, several relief groups flew drones over the affected areas to survey the damage, identify blocked roads and find displaced people.

But the drone operators didn’t share the information they gathered with local authorities or other relief organisations, says Patrick Meier, who was in Manila doing humanitarian work with the UN at the time. Many of the drone teams didn’t even know about one another, making their work inefficient and even dangerous.

These problems highlight the need for a code of conduct and best practice for drone use in humanitarian situations, says Meier, who founded the Humanitarian UAV Network to move toward that goal. Meier was one of the speakers at a recent symposium on drones in Washington, which discussed many uses of unmanned aircraft in humanitarian situations but highlighted the need for regulation. Meier says the Humanitarian UAV Network plans to launch a set of guidelines next month that will make sure drone use in humanitarian settings is safe, coordinated and effective.

Though unmanned aircraft are best known for their military uses, smaller drones are becoming popular with photographers and others with a few hundred pounds to spend and a desire for aerial images. In June, police in London seized a drone flying over Wimbledon, two days before the tennis tournament was set to begin. In July, efforts to drop water and retardant on rapidly spreading fires in southern California were stymied by drones hovering over the flames, because of the risk to firefighting aircraft. Also in July, a teenager in Connecticut posted a video of a homemade drone firing a gun in the woods.

But there are many ways drones can be used for good, says Peter Rabley, property rights director for the Omidyar Network, a philanthropic investment firm. Drones can democratise data collection and “help make the world a better, safer place”, he says.

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The Humanitarian UAV Network (UAViators) recently organized a 3-day Policy Forum on Humanitarian UAVs. The mission of UAViators is to promote the safe, coordinated and effective use of UAVs in a wide range of humanitarian settings. The Forum, the first of it’s kind, was generously sponsored and hosted by the Rockefeller Foundation at their conference center in Bellagio, Italy. The aerial panoramic photograph below was captured by UAV during the Forum.

UAViators brought together a cross-section of experts from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), UN Department for Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), World Food Program (WFP), International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), American Red Cross, European Commission's Humanitarian Aid Organization (ECHO), Medair, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap, ICT for Peace Foundation (ICT4Peace), DJI, BuildPeace, Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO), Trilateral Research, Harvard University, Texas A&M, University of Central Lancashire, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Pepperdine University School of Law and other independent experts. The purpose of the Forum, which I had the distinct pleasure of running: to draft guidelines for the safe, coordinated and effective use of UAVs in humanitarian settings.

Five key sets of guidelines were drafted, each focusing on priority areas where policy has been notably absent: 1) Code of Conduct; 2) Data Ethics; 3) Community Engagement; 4) Principled Partnerships; and 5) Conflict Sensitivity. These five policy areas were identified as priorities during the full-day Humanitarian UAV Experts Meeting co-organized at the UN Secretariat in New York by UAViators and OCHA (see summary here). After 3 very long days of deliberation in Bellagio, we converged towards an initial draft set of guidelines for each of the key areas. There was certainly no guarantee that this convergence would happen, so I’m particularly pleased and very grateful to all participants for their hard work. Indeed, I’m reminded of Alexander Aleinikoff (Deputy High Commissioner in the Office of UNHCR) who defines innovation as “dynamic problem solving among friends.” The camaraderie throughout the long hours had a lot to do with the positive outcome. Conferences typically take a group photo of participants; we chose to take an aerial video instead:

https://youtu.be/Sm-bx_TL3YE

Of course, this doesn’t mean we’re done. The most immediate next step is to harmonize each of the guideline documents so that they “speak” to each other. We’ll then solicit internal institutional feedback from the organizations that were represented in Bellagio. Once this feedback has been considered and integrated where appropriate, we will organize a soft public launch of the guidelines in August 2015. The purpose of this soft launch is to actively solicit feedback from the broader humanitarian community. We plan to hold Webinars in August and September to invite this additional feedback. The draft guidelines will be further reviewed in October at the 2015 Humanitarian UAV Experts Meeting, which is being hosted at MIT and co-organized by UAViators, OCHA and the World Humanitarian Summit (WHS).

We’ll then review all the feedback received since Bellagio to produce the “final” version of the guidelines, which will be presented to donors and humanitarian organizations for public endorsement. The guidelines will be officially launched at the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016. In the meantime, these documents will serve as best practices to inform both humanitarian UAV trainings and missions. In other words, they will already serve to guide the safe, coordinated and effective use of UAVs in humanitarian settings. We will also use these draft guidelines to hold ourselves accountable. To be sure, humanitarian innovation is not simply about the technology; humanitarian innovation is also about the processes that enable the innovative use of emerging technologies.

https://youtu.be/hD0JpY-vtBg

While the first text message (SMS) was sent in 1992, it took 20 years (!) until a set of guidelines were developed to inform the use of SMS in disaster response. I’m relieved that we won't have to wait until 2035 to produce UAV guidelines. Yes, the evidence base for the added value of UAVs in humanitarian missions is still thin, which is why it is all the more remarkable that forward-thinking guidelines are already being drafted. As several participants noted during the Forum, “The humanitarian community completely missed the boat on the mobile phone revolution. It is vital that we not make this same mistake again with newer, emerging technologies.” As such, the question for everyone at the Forum was not whether UAVs will have a significant impact, but what what guidelines are needed now to guide the impact that this new technology will inevitably have on future humanitarian efforts.

The evidence base is necessarily thin since UAVs are only now emerging as a potential humanitarian technology. There is still a lot of learning and documenting to be done. The Humanitarian UAV Network has already taken on this task and will continue to enable learning and catalyze information sharing by convening expert meetings and documenting lessons learned in collaboration with key partners. The Network will also seek to partner with select groups on strategic projects with the aim of expanding the evidence base. In sum, I think we’re on the right track, and staying on the right track will require a joint and sustained effort with a cross-section of partners and stakeholders. To be sure, UAViators cannot accomplish the above alone. It took 22 dedicated experts and 3 long days to produce the draft guidelines. So consider this post an open invitation to join these efforts as we press on to make the use of UAVs in humanitarian crises safer, more coordinated and more effective.

In the meantime, a big thanks once again to all the experts who joined us for the Forum, and equally big thanks to the team at the Rockefeller Foundation for graciously hosting us in Bellagio.

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The Humanitarian UAV Network (UAViators) promotes the safe, coordinated and effective use of UAVs in a wide range of humanitarian settings. To this end, the Network's mission includes training the first generation of Humanitarian UAV experts. This explains why I teamed up with VIVES Aeronautics College last year to create and launch the first ever UAV training specifically geared towards established humanitarian organizations. The 3-day, intensive and hands-on training took place this month in Belgium and went superbly well, which is why we’ll be offering it again next year and possibly a second time this year as well.

Participants included representatives from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), World Food Program (WFP), International Organization for Migration (IOM), European Union Humanitarian Aid Organization (ECHO), MedairDirect Relief, and Germany's Development Organization GIZ. We powered through the most important subjects, ranging from airspace regulations to the physics of flight, the in’s and out’s of civil aviation, aeronautics, weather forecasts, programming flight routes, operational safety, standard operating procedures, best practices, etc. I gave trainings on both Humanitarian UAV Applications and Humanitarian UAV Operations, which totaled well over 4 hours of instruction and discussion. The Ops training included a detailed review of best practices—summary available here. Knowing how to operate this new technology is definitely the easy part; knowing how to use UAVs effectively and responsibly in real-world humanitarian contexts is a far bigger challenge; hence the need for this training.

[Click Here to continue reading and see dozens of pictures from said training]

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The purpose of the handbook below is to promote the safe, coordinated and effective use of UAVs in a wide range of humanitarian settings. The handbook draws on lessons learned during recent humanitarian UAV missions in Vanuatu (March-April 2015) and Nepal (April-May 2015) as well as earlier UAV missions in both Haiti and the Philippines.

I wrote this handbook for the following reasons: UAV/Drone experts who engage in relief efforts without prior experience in this domain often assume that they know everything because, heck, they are the experts when it comes to this new technology. Likewise, although to a lesser extent, disaster response groups think they are the experts when it comes to Humanitarian UAV/Drone Missions since, heck, they've been doing disaster response longer than anyone else. These kinds of assumptions backfired big time in response to the Nepal Earthquake. The purpose of this handbook is to educate and raise awareness in order to prevent the circus act we saw in Nepal.

The handbook takes the form of an operational checklist divided into Pre-flight, In-flight and Post-flight sections. The best practices documented in each section are meant to serve as a minimum set of guidelines only. As such, this document is not the final word on best practices, which explains why the handbook is available here as an open, editable Google Doc. We invite humanitarian, UAV and research communities to improve this handbook and to keep our collective best practices current by inserting key comments and suggestions directly to the Google Doc. Both hardcopies and digital copies of this handbook are available for free and may not in part or in whole be used for commercial purposes. 

Click here for more information on the Humanitarian UAV Network.

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Humanitarian and development organizations like the United Nations and the World Bank typically carry out disaster damage and needs assessments following major disasters. The ultimate goal of these assessments is to measure the impact of disasters on the society, economy and environment of the affected country or region. This includes assessing the damage caused to building infrastructure, for example. These assessment surveys are generally carried out in person—that is, on foot and/or by driving around an affected area. This is a very time-consuming process with very variable results in terms of data quality. Can 3D (Point Clouds) derived from very high resolution aerial imagery captured by UAVs accelerate and improve the post-disaster damage assessment process? 

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There are at the very least 7 humanitarian UAV teams operating in Nepal. We know this since these teams voluntarily chose to liaise with the Humanitarian UAV Network (UAViators). In this respect, the current humanitarian UAV response is far better coordinated than the one I witnessed in the Philippines right after Typhoon Haiyan in 2013. In fact, there was little to no coordination at the time amongst the multiple civilian UAV teams; let alone between these teams and humanitarian organizations, or the Filipino government for that matter. This lack of coordination coupled with the fact that I could not find any existing “Code of Conduct” for the use of UAVs in humanitarian settings is actually what prompted me to launch UAViators just months after leaving the Philippines.

The past few days have made it clear that we still have a long way to go in the humanitarian UAV space. Below are some early observations (not to be taken as criticisms but early reflections only). UAV technology is highly disruptive and is only now starting to have visible impact (both good and bad) in humanitarian contexts. We don’t have all the answers; the institutions are not keeping up with the rapid pace of innovation, nor are the regulators. The challenges below cut across technical, organizational, regulatory challenges that are only growing more complex. So I welcome your constructive input on how to improve these efforts moving forward.

Please click here to continue reading.

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Point Clouds, or 3D models derived from high resolution aerial imagery, are in fact nothing new. Several software platforms already exist to reconstruct a series of 2D aerial images into fully fledged 3D-fly-through models. Check out these very neat examples from my colleagues at Pix4D and SenseFly:CastleJesus and Matterhorn. But what does a castle, Jesus and a mountain have to do with humanitarian action? As noted in my previous blog post (on the World Bank's use of UAVs in response to Cyclone Pam), there’s only so much disaster damage one can glean from nadir (that is, vertical) imagery and oblique imagery. Lets suppose that the nadir image below was taken by an orbiting satellite or flying UAV right after an earthquake, for example. How can you possibly assess disaster damage from this one picture alone? Even if you had nadir imagery for these houses before the earthquake, your ability to assess structural damage would be limited.

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Above: Aéroport de Port Vila - Bauerfield International Airport. As we land, thousands of uprooted trees could be seen in almost every direction. Below:Massive roots were not enough to save these trees from Cyclone Pam. The devastation reminds us how powerful nature is.

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After getting clearance from the Australian Defense Force (ADF), we pack up our UAVs and head over to La Lagune for initial tests. Close collaboration with the military is an absolute must for humanitarian UAV missions. UAVs cannot operate in Restricted Operations Zones without appropriate clearance.

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We're in Vanuatu by invitation of the Government's National Disaster Risk Management Office (NDMO). So we're working very closely with our hosts to assess disaster damage and resulting needs. The government and donors need the damage quantified to assess how much funding is necessary for the recovery efforts; and where geographically that funding should be targeted.

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Ceci n'est pas un drone; what we found at La Lagune, where the ADF has set up camp. At 2200 every night we send the ADF our flight plan clearance requests for the following day. For obvious safety reasons, we never deviate from these plans after they've been approved.

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Unpacking and putting together the hexacopters can take a long time. The professional and certified UAV team from New Zealand (X-Craft) follows strict operational check lists to ensure safety and security. We also have a professional and certified team from Australia, Heliwest, which will be flying quadcopters. The UAV team from SPC is also joining our efforts. I'm proud to report that both the Australian & New Zealand teams were recruited directly from the pilot roster of the Humanitarian UAV Network.

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The payload (camera) attached to our hexacopters; not exactly a GoPro. We also have other sensors for thermal imaging, etc.

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Programming the test flights. Here's a quick video intro on how to program UAVs for autonomous flights.

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Night falls fast in Vanuatu...

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… So our helpful drivers kindly light up our work area.

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After flawless test flights; we're back at "HQ" to program the flight paths for tomorrow morning's humanitarian UAV missions. The priority survey areas tend to change on a daily basis as the government gets more information on which outlying islands have been hardest hit. Our first mission will focus on an area comprised of informal settlements.

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Dawn starts to break at 0500. We haven't gotten much sleep.

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At 0600, we arrive at the designated meeting point, the Beach Bar. This will be our base of operations for this morning's mission.

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The flight plans for the hexacopters are ready to go. We have clearance from Air Traffic Control (ATC) to fly until 0830 as manned aircraft start operating extensively after 0900. So in complex airspaces like this one in Vanuatu's Port Vila, we only fly very early in the morning and after 1700 in the evening. We have ATC's direct phone number and are in touch with the tower at all times.

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Could this be the one and only SXSW 2015 bag in Vanuatu?

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All our multirotor UAVs have been tested once again and are now ready to go. The government has already communicated to nearby villages that UAVs will be operating between 0630-0830. We aim to collect aerial imagery at a resolution of 4cm-6cm throughout our missions.

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An old basketball court; perfect for take-off & landing.

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And of course, when we're finally ready to fly, it starts to pour. Other challenges include an ash cloud from a nearby volcano. We've also been told that kids here are pro's with slingshots (which is one reason why the government informed local villagers of the mission; i.e., to request that kids not use the UAVs for target practice).

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After some delays, we are airborne at last.

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Operating the UAViators DJI Phantom...

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… Which I'm using purely for documentary purposes. In coming days, we'll be providing our government partners with a hands-on introduction on how to operate Phantom II's. Building local capacity is key; which is why this action item is core to the Humanitarian UAV Network's Code of Conduct.

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Can you spot the hexacopter? While there's only one in the picture below, we actually have two in the air at different altitudes which we are operating by Extended Line of Site and First Person View as a backup.

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More aerial shots I took using the Phantom (not for damage assessment; simply for documentary purposes).

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Can you spot the basketball court?

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Large clouds bring back the rain; visibility is reduced. We have to suspend our flights; will try again after 1700.

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Meanwhile, my Phantom's GoPro snaps this close up picture on landing.

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Stay tuned for updates and in particular the very high resolution aerial imagery that we'll be posting to MapBox in coming days; along with initial analysis carried out by multiple partners including Humanitarian OpenStreetMap (HOT) and QCRI's MicroMappers. Many thanks to MapBox for supporting our efforts. We will also be overlaying the aerial imagery analysis over this MicroMappers crisis map of ground-based pictures of disaster damage in order to triangulate the damage assessment results.

In the meantime, more information on this Humanitarian UAV Mission to Vanuatu--spearheaded by the World Bank in very close collaboration with the Government and SPC--can be found on the Humanitarian UAV Network (UAViators) Ops page here. UAViators is an initiative I launched following Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in 2013. More on UAViators and the use of humanitarian UAVs in my new book Digital Humanitarians.

Important: this blog post is a personal update written in my personal capacity; none of the above is in any way shape or form a formal communique or press release by any of the partners. Official updates will be provided by the Government of Vanuatu and World Bank directly. Please contact me here for official media requests; kindly note that my responses will need to be cleared by the Government & Bank first.

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UAV payload unit

UAVs can support humanitarian action in a variety of ways. Perhaps the most common and well-documented use-case is data collection. There are several other use-cases, however, such as payload transportation, which I have blogged about herehere and here. I had the opportunity to learn more about the logistics and operations of payload UAVs while advising a well-known public health NGO in Liberia as well as an international organization in Tanzania. This advising led to conversations with some of the leading experts in the UAV-for-transportation space like Google Project WingMatternet and Vayu for example.

Below are just some of the questions you'll want to ask when you're considering the use of UAVs for the transportation of small payloads. Of course, the UAV may not be the most appropriate technology for the problem you're looking to solve. So naturally, the very first step is to carry out a comparative cost-benefit analysis with multiple technologies. The map below, kindly shared by Matternet, is from a project they're working on with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Papua New Guinea.

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Why does it take some 4 hours to drive 60km (40 miles) compared to 55 minutes by UAV? The pictures below (also shared by Matternet) speak for themselves.

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Any use of UAVs in humanitarian contexts should follow the Code of Conduct proposed by the Humanitarian UAV Network (UAViators), which was recently endorsed by the UN. Some of the (somewhat obvious) questions you'll want to bear in mind as you carry out your cost-benefit analysis thus include:

  • What is maximum, minimum and the average distance that the UAV needs to fly?
  • How frequently do the UAVs need to make the deliveries?
  • How much mass needs to be moved per given amount of time?
  • What is the mass of individual packages (and can these be split into smaller parcels if need be)?
  • Do the packages contain a mechanism for cold transport or would the UAV need to provide refrigeration (assuming this is needed)?
  • What do the take-off and landing spaces look like? How much area, type of ground, size of trees or other obstacles nearby?
  • What does the typology between the take-off and landing sites look like? Tall trees, mountains, or other obstructions?
  • Regarding batteries, is there easy access to electricity in the areas where the UAVs will be landing?
  • Is there any form of cell phone coverage in the landing areas?
  • What is the overall fixed and variable cost of operating the payload UAVs compared to other solutions?
  • What impact (both positive and negative) will the introduction of the payload UAV have on the local economy?

While the payload weight is relatively small (1kg-2kg) for low-cost UAVs, keep in mind that UAV flights can continue around the clock. As one of my colleagues at the Syria Airlift Project recently noted, "If  one crew could launch a plane every 5 minutes, that would add up to almost 200kg in an eight-hour time period."

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Naturally, Google and Matternet are not the only group out there developing UAVs for payload transportation. Amazon, DHL and others are prototyping the same technology. In addition, many of the teams I met at the recent Drones for Good Challenge in Dubai demo'ed payload solutions. One of the competition's top 5 finalists was Drone Life from Spain. They flew their quadcopter (pictured above) fully autonomously. What's special about this particular prototype is not just it's range (40-50km with 2-3kg payload) but the fact that it also includes a fridge (for vaccines, organs, etc.,) that can be remotely monitored in real-time to ensure the temperature remains within required parameters.

At some point in your planning process, you'll want to map the landing and take-off sites. The map below (click to enlarge) is the one we recently produced for the Tanzania UAV project (which is still being explored). Naturally, all these payload UAV flights would be pre-programmed and autonomous. If you'd like to learn more about how one programs such flights, check out my short video here.

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One other point worth keeping in mind is that UAVs need not be independent from existing transportation infrastructure. One team at the recent Drones for Good Challenge in Dubai suggested using public buses as take-off and landing points for UAVs. A university in the US is actually exploring this same use case, extending the reach of delivery trucks by using UAVs.

Of course, there are a host of issues that one needs to consider when operating any kind of UAV for humanitarian purposes. These include regulations, permits, risk assessments and mitigation strategies, fail safe mechanisms, community engagement, data privacy/security, etc. The above is simply meant to highlight some of the basic questions that need to be posed at the outset of the project. Needless to say, the very first question should always be whether the UAV is indeed the most appropriate tool (cost/benefit analysis) for the task at hand. In any case, the above is obviously not an exhaustive list. So I'd very much welcome feedback on what's missing. Thank you!

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I am Chairing a panel on "Humanitarian UAVs" at the DroneApps & Expo 2015 in Lausanne, Switzerland (September 14-15). This panel will featuring international UAV experts and multiple use-cases of UAVs (imagery capture, payload transportation, etc). We will also have a "Demo Day" where participants will get hands-on introductions to operating UAVs for humanitarian purposes. All the information below is also available here: http://uaviators.org/forum/humanitarian-uav-panel-at-droneapps-conference-expo-2015.
 
Simon Johnson and Benoit Curdy founded Drone Apps to create an ambient atmosphere where the most outstanding users of the drone industry meet innovators and regulators to discuss or even resolve burning issues of the business that will help the global UAV industry grow rapidly. The event is dedicated to be the Main Stage in the civilian UAV space for elaborating on new ideas and establishing breakthrough partnerships. Drone Apps is expected to have such a fundamental impact, that Google has coined the event “The Davos of Drones”.

The date and venue of the ground-breaking Drone Apps Conference & Expo is
14-15th September 2015
SwissTech Convention Center – Lausanne, Switzerland


We are working very hard to make Drone Apps a unique and unforgettable unmanned aerials systems gathering to meet & share, network & cooperate.

• Quality participants according to the concept “users meet inventors and regulators”; invitation only, active international members of the sector.
• Independently curated sessions to learn, discuss and share relevant industry opportunities and issues.
• Intimate event: 400 participants, no live streaming, relaxed atmosphere.
• High quality venue for presentations, panels, networking, private meetings and serendipitous moments.
• Professional organisers, moderators and logistics.

The most sought-after Speakers and representatives of specific UAV topics will get on stage in each panel and plenary session.

Why attend Drone Apps if you are interested in drones for humanitarian applications?

Because the pass provides instant access to 400 like-minded, far-sighted drone professionals, end-users, and businesses who are keen on listening to you. With your tickets, you can enter to a VIP Club of decision makers related to the global UAV business who are prospective supporters, promoters, partners to your project about the humanitarian application of drones.

Do you have plans and ideas how to do good with drones in humanitarian missions? Share and turn them into reality with your prospective partners at Drone Apps on 14-15th September 2015 in Lausanne!
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