As first responders continue to embrace drones for emergency missions across the globe, a new map dashboard hopes to facilitate communication, coordination, and collaboration between various public safety agencies. This free, interactive global map and directory of emergency services drone programs is now home to over 900 agencies from more than 20 countries – and the numbers are rising steadily.
DRONERESPONDERS, a nonprofit program, has spent the last few months working with the NASA AMES Research Institute and mapping company Esri to create the most comprehensive directory of public safety agencies that use drones in emergency response.
Not only is the initiative being welcomed by the community but it has also started showing results, too. As Charles Werner, director of DRONERESPONDERS, explains:
Our goal is to establish a collaborative network that can share best practices, lessons learned, regulatory updates, safety issues, facilitate training opportunities, as well as identify the location and program capabilities.
This has already helped some agencies to identify programs near them that they were not previously aware of and started discussions of assistance and/or developing regional teams.
Ton of data to explore in interactive map of public safety agencies that use drones
Werner goes on to explain that the map dashboard gives users the ability to filter the data by country, state, discipline, and more. It also provides useful statistics on program discipline, answering questions like:
- What year did the program start?
- How many drone operators does the agency have?
- How many drones are there in the fleet and who is the primary drone manufacturer?
- What payload capabilities is the agency utilizing – zoom, thermal, speaker, etc.?
As you look at the map, you can simply click on an icon and a data window will pop up to display that agency’s data. Click here to go to the map dashboard.
In the meantime, if your public safety drone program is not listed in this directory, you can click here to add the information to the database.
Read more: Interactive US map shows nearly 10,000 drone, UFO encounter incident reports
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