Helping faster and more efficiently with drones in disaster situations

The heat wave at the end of June has caused the risk of forest fires to soar across Europe. In Venezuela, people are still dependent on any help they can receive after the devastating earthquake. And in the USA, tornado season has begun. In order to cope better with natural disasters and extreme weather events, drones are increasingly being used. Not least to get a picture of the situation and to better coordinate prevention measures and, if necessary, rescue measures.

In accidents and disaster situations, the willingness to help is generally high. In addition to the professional rescue forces from the police, fire departments and the Federal Agency for Technical Relief, for example during the flood in the Ahr Valley, hundreds, if not thousands, of volunteers quickly gathered to assist people in need. In such an exceptional situation, keeping an overview is almost impossible. At the same time, however, fast and efficient action is essential. On the one hand, to alleviate the immediate consequences of the disaster. On the other hand, to protect the rescuers from avoidable dangers to life and limb.

Distilling the decisive insights, as well as an accurate and constant picture of the situation, from countless pieces of information and data is of essential importance. At this point, unmanned systems have created entirely new possibilities, literally, for keeping an overview. At the same time, due to the amount of data generated, they contribute to making the creation of a situational picture even more complex.

But as if it were not challenging enough to bring together data from the various sources — from UAS and helicopters to manned and unmanned land and water vehicles through to satellite data — adequate relief measures must already be coordinated at the same time and a functioning communications and supply infrastructure implemented. For this, in turn, the use of different systems, not infrequently unmanned systems, is required. In the RESITEK project (Resilient Technologies for Civil Protection), a total of 16 institutes of the German Aerospace Center are dedicated to the development of a modular, continuously expandable data and visualization platform that is intended to enable continuous situation monitoring as well as optimized mission planning and monitoring. The aim is to enable authorities and organizations with security responsibilities (BOS) to respond in the best possible way in an emergency.

Since geographical challenges can hardly be simulated theoretically, a large-scale exercise on dealing with the consequences of an extreme heavy rainfall event recently took place. And it took place of all places in the Ahr Valley, where almost exactly five years ago, after days of rainfall, one of the greatest natural disasters in post-war German history occurred. The use of drones in the air and on the ground played a central role. With the help of satellite data, drone flights and reconnaissance missions using in part teleoperated unmanned vehicles, it was tested how quickly and over how large an area information can be collected and transferred into a situational assessment. In addition, a local communications system was set up through which emergency forces could exchange information. “RESITEK shows how modern technologies can strengthen civil protection. What is decisive is not only the performance of individual systems, but their interaction,” summarized Prof. Dr.-Ing. Anke Kaysser-Pyzalla, Chair of the Executive Board of the German Aerospace Center, after the successful simulation of the consequences of a heavy rainfall event. An exercise is planned for the fall in the Braunschweig region to practice dealing with the consequences of a devastating autumn storm.

This article was created in cooperation with Drones, the trade magazine with Insights for the Uncrewed Future.

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