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The Humanitarian UAV Network (UAViators) and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) are co-organizing the first ever “Experts Meeting on Humanitarian UAVs” on November 6th at UN Head-quarters in New York. This full-day strategy meeting, which is co-sponsored by the ICT for Peace Foundation (ICT4Peace) and QCRI, will bring together leading UAV experts (including several members of the UAV Network’s Advisory Board, such as DJI) with seasoned humanitarian 
professionals from OCHA, WFP, UNICEF, UNHCR, UNDAC, IOM, American Red Cross, European Commission and several other groups that are also starting to use civilian UAVs or have a strong interest in leveraging this technology.

The strategy session, which I’ll be running with my colleague Dan Gilman from OCHA (who authored this Policy Brief on Humanitarian UAVs), will provide an important opportunity for information sharing between UAV experts and humanitarian professionals with the explicit goal of catalyzing direct collabo-ration on the operational use of UAVs in humanitarian settings. UAV experts seek to better understand humanitarian information needs (e.g. UNDAC needs) while humanitarians seek to better understand the challenges and opportunities regarding the rapid deployment of UAVs. In sum, this workshop will bring together 30 experts from different disciplines to pave the way forward for the safe and effective use of humanitarian UAVs.

The Experts Meeting will include presentations from select participants such as Gene Robinson (leading expert in the use of UAVs for Search & Rescue), Kate Chapman (director of Humanitarian OpenStreetMap), Peter Spruyt (European Commission’s Joint Research Center), Jacob Petersen (Anthea Technologies), Charles Devaney (University of Hawaii), Adam Klaptocz (Drone Adventures & senseFly) and several others. Both Matternet and Google’s Project Wing have been formally invited to present on the latest in UAV payload transportation. (Representatives from the Small UAV Coalition have also been invited to attend).

In addition to the above, the strategy meeting will include dedicated sessions on Ethics, Legislation and Regulation facilitated by Brendan Schulman (leading UAV lawyer) and Kristin Sandvik (Norwegian Center for Humanitarian Studies). Other sessions are expected to focus on Community Engagement, Imagery Analysis as well as Training and Certification. The final session of the day will be dedicated to identifying potential joint pilot projects between UAV pro’s and humanitarian organizations as well as the Humanitarian UAV Network.

We will be writing up a summary of the Experts Meeting and making this report publicly available via the Humanitarian UAV Network website. In addition, we plan to post videos of select talks given during the strategy meeting along with accompanying slides. This first meeting at UN Headquarters serves as a spring board for 2 future strategy meetings scheduled for 2015. One of these will be a 3-day high-level & policy-focused international workshop on Humanitarian UAVs, which will be held at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Center in Bellagio, Italy (pictured below in an UAV/aerial image I took earlier this year). This workshop will be run by myself, Dan Gilman and Kristin Sandvik (both of whom are on the Advisory Board of the Humanitarian UAV Network).

Kristin and I are also looking to co-organize another workshop in 2015 to focus specifically on the use of non-lethal UAVs in conflict zones. We are currently talking to prospective donors to make this happen. So stay tuned for more information on all three Humanitarian UAV meetings as one of our key goals at the Humanitarian UAV Network is to raise awareness about humanitarian UAVs by publicly disseminating results & findings from key policy discussions and UAV missions. In the meantime, big thanks to UN/OCHA, ICT4Peace and the Rockefeller Foundation for their crucial and most timely support.

See also:

• Humanitarians in the Sky: Using UAVs for Disaster Response [link]
• Low-Cost UAV Applications for Post-Disaster Damage Assessments: A Streamlined Workflow [Link]
• Humanitarian UAVs Fly in China After Earthquake [link]
• Humanitarian UAV Missions During Balkan Floods [link]
• Humanitarian UAVs in the Solomon Islands [link]
• UAVs, Community Mapping & Disaster Risk Reduction in Haiti [link]