Feature article: Drones 2.0

In a piece first published in the BAPCO Journal earlier this year, Philip Mason talks to major vendors as well as critical communications technology experts about the potential evolution of UAV use by UK public safety.

Photo credit: Adobe Stock/Denis Rozhnovsky

One of the most important pieces of new equipment leveraged by emergency services organisations in recent years has been unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), otherwise known as drones.

As those following the sector will know, UAVs can have multiple uses in an emergency services context, linked in large part to their ability to travel at great height.

They are ideal, for instance, for police operations involving the finding of missing persons. Likewise, drones can also provide massively increased situational awareness during fire and rescue service missions, providing a view (or several views) of the fireground from the air.

While these use-cases are, of course, massively beneficial, technology and its use is always moving on.

At the minute, UK public safety organisations generally deploy UAVs by physically launching them at the scene. What if – using beyond visual line-of-site capability – they were able to simply fly to an incident when required?