COLLARIS - 2030 horizon for drones in civil protection and crisis management activities

The rapid development of drone technology represents a fantastic opportunity for first responders and crisis management professionals for better reconnaissance, increased situational awareness, improved coordination of activities as well as a growing number of direct, physical actions.
During the course of the Network activities various representatives of the civil protection and crisis management community helped to elaborate and clearly endorsed the following general observation. While there are a high number of drone solutions that have already achieved technical maturity, today only a relatively small fraction of available capabilities are used operationally for rescue and crisis management. Effective use of drones is limited mainly by legal and organisational obstacles and not by the pace of technology development. As a significant number of innovative solutions will become available within the coming five years, this gap will grow unless those impediments are properly addressed.

The purpose of this report is to provide an overview of the use of drones in rescue and civil protection operations that could become a reality before 2030. The report presents a brief description of 22 selected use cases and identifies non-technical enablers required for real operational use of these existing or upcoming capabilities.