Drone Applications for Supporting Disaster Management

Introduction: Besides the military and commercial applications of drones, there is no doubt in their efficiency in case of supporting emergency management. This paper evaluates some experiences and describes some initiatives using drones to support disaster management. Method: This paper focuses mainly on operational and tactical drone application in disaster management using a time-scaled separation of the application, like pre-disaster activity, activity immediately after the occurrence of a disaster and the activity after the primary disaster elimination. Paper faces to 5 disasters, like nuclear accidents, dangerous material releases, floods, earthquakes and forest fires. Author gathered international examples and used own experiences in this field. Results and discussion: An earthquake is a rapid escalating disaster, where, many times, there is no other way for a rapid damage assessment than aerial reconnaissance. For special rescue teams, the drone application can help much in a rapid location selection, where enough place remained to survive for victims. Floods are typical for a slow onset disaster. In contrast, managing floods is a very complex and difficult task. It requires continuous monitoring of dykes, flooded and threatened areas. Drone can help managers largely keeping an area under observation. Forest fires are disasters, where the tactical application of drone is already well developed. Drone can be used for fire detection, intervention monitoring and also for post-fire monitoring. In case of nuclear accident or hazardous material leakage drone is also a very effective or can be the only one tool for supporting disaster management.