A video recording of a webinar co-hosted by the COLLARIS and COVALEX projects which explored the opportunities and challenges of enabling the operation of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) such as drones in a disaster situation is now available.
With the increasing use of UAVs during emergencies, future air operations over a crisis area will become more and more complex. As UAV flights are carried out rapidly and simultaneously by multiple institutions, ensuring safety and good coordination is a challenge. An additional level of complexity is added by flights of human-operated aircraft. Today, a typical figure is zero human-operated aircraft when UAV flights are performed, or zero UAVs when human-operated aircraft perform flights. The webinar focused on ways to change this situation to enable safe and effectively coordinated flights of both types of aviation during a crisis operation.
The two speakers during the event on December 14, 2023 were Jakub Ryzenko – Head of Crisis Information Centre (CIK, part of the Space Research Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences), and Emil Wrzosek – Crisis management specialist at Crisis Information Centre. The webinar, which welcomed nearly 30 participants from all over Europe, was moderated by Jasmina Schmidt (scientific researcher at Disaster Competence Network Austria). You can watch a recording of the webinar here:
A detailed summary of the event can be found in this COVALEX story.
About COLLARIS
COLLARIS (COLLaborative network on unmanned AeRIal Systems) is a capacity-building initiative to develop a sustainable European network of scientific, engineering, and end-user expertise related to unmanned aerial systems (UAS) in civil protection and disaster response. COLLARIS will offer a networking platform as part of the Union Civil Protection Knowledge Network for information exchange and experimentation with advanced concepts of UAS for disaster response and crisis management. These activities are accompanied by thematic workshops, webinars, and moderated discussions as well as trials and embedded first responder trainings, aimed at increasing the efficiency of UAS operations by bringing knowledge closer to operational use.
About COVALEX
COVALEX (Community of Valued Experts in Hydrometeorological and Technological Multi-Hazards) is an EU-funded project that aims to create a community of experts in hydrometeorological and technological hazards (thunderstorms, heavy snowfall, droughts, hot and cold spells etc.). The goal of COVALEX is to compile and make use of different experiences, geographical locations, and networks, and to promote prevention, preparation, and testing processes. The project brings together key