Drones to manage the urban environment: Risks, rewards, alternatives

Aerial surveillance can detect visual, heat, vegetation, and atmospheric changes over time, and aerial transport can facilitate the collection of air, liquid and solid samples for later analysis in laboratory conditions. Drones have great potential for urban environmental analysis, but also raise valid concerns about safety, security and privacy. Ground-based monitoring (Internet of Things) can achieve many of these potentials with no risk to safety and a lower perceived risk to privacy and security. Low altitude drones may become limited to clearly defined geographic regions spatially and altitudinally, while higher altitude drones are likely to be accepted for security reasons, and then also used for environmental purposes. Safety records of military drones are still substandard for civilian application, but the technology is rapidly evolving. Whether society will rank safety of drones against that of vehicle traffic, or shark attacks, is not yet clear.