Drones: a force for good when flying in the face of disaster
Jennifer Hlad in Washington
After typhoon Haiyan wreaked havoc on the Philippines in 2013, killing more than 6,300 people and destroying farms and villages, several relief groups flew drones over the affected areas to survey the damage, identify blocked roads and find displaced people.
But the drone operators didn’t share the information they gathered with local authorities or other relief organisations, says Patrick Meier, who was in Manila doing humanitarian work with the UN at the time. Many of the drone teams didn’t even know about one another, making their work inefficient and even dangerous.
These problems highlight the need for a code of conduct and best practice for drone use in humanitarian situations, says Meier, who founded the Humanitarian UAV Network to move toward that goal. Meier was one of the speakers at a recentsymposium on drones in Washington, which discussed many uses of unmanned aircraft in humanitarian situations but highlighted the need for regulation. Meier says the Humanitarian UAV Network plans to launch a set of guidelines next month that will make sure drone use in humanitarian settings is safe, coordinated and effective.
