Page 34 - A U4SSC deliverable - Accelerating city transformation using frontier technologies

Unmanned aerial vehicles/drones

Overview on drones

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are powerful sensing tools for a smart city. With high mobility and low
costs, UAVs, also commonly known as drones or remotely piloted aircrafts, have found a wide range
of applications in smart cities from environmental monitoring, supporting firefighting efforts to aerial
mapping for disaster management and bringing broadband connectivity to remote locations. In the
near future, drones will also be used for improving civilian, commercial and governmental services, such
as surveillance and reconnaissance, public safety, homeland security, border surveillance, agricultural
activities, architecture surveillance, smart transportation and more.

“Humanitarian drones in particular have contributed
significantly to disaster relief efforts worldwide”

Humanitarian drones, in particular, have contributed significantly to disaster relief efforts worldwide.
Small and light-weight UAVs were launched after Typhoon Haiyan in 2013 to identify safe locations for
disaster relief workers to set up camps, identify safe roads for travel, and assess damage from storms
and flooding that followed and capture aerial images to aid disaster relief efforts. UAVs were also
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deployed in Haiti following Hurricane Sandy in 2013 to assess collapsed houses and flood risks, and
capture aerial images to identify areas where epidemics could occur easily. Similarly, humanitarian
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drones were deployed to assist search and rescue operations during the Balkan flood in 2014, from
capturing aerial images to identify displaced landmines to analysing the effects of landslides. China
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also experienced a 6.1 magnitude earthquake in 2014 and humanitarian UAVs were flown to capture
aerial images to assess the damage, enabling rescue workers and disaster responders to prioritise
their search and rescue efforts.
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One of the major concerns related to the use of drones is privacy. It is easy to mount a camera or a
device to capture information, which may occasionally violate the privacy of people. In the United
Kingdom, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) does not permit drones fitted with cameras to be flown
within 150 meters of a congested area (which includes all urban areas with the exemption of certain
open space). 86

Enhancing urban monitoring and mapping using drones

One of the growing applications for UAVs is in agriculture. Drones are set to revolutionise the operation
of many agricultural activities. Drones can be utilised for monitoring crops and for chemical distribution.
They can provide highly accurate images of a farm’s fields and cover hundreds of acres in a single
flight all with minimal human involvement. One study has estimated that drone-powered solutions
in agriculture are roughly valued at USD 32.4 billion. There are six ways that drones can improve
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agricultural activities substantially:
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