New York City drones inspect structures after rare earthquake

Though moves to ease the operation of drones in New York City only date to last July, municipal authorities are already so habituated to deploying UAVs when occasions arise that they immediately turned to their fleet in response to Friday’s 4.8 magnitude earthquake.

Within hours of the rare but strong tremblor that shook the area around New York City early Friday, New York Police Department drones were already aloft scanning the facades of critical infrastructure for any visible anomalies in the wake of the quake. Local news teams accompanied members of the Technical Assistance Response Unit piloting UAVs launched from boats to inspect bridges for signs of compromise. 

Those reports said New York Police and other municipal agencies were also undertaking aerial scans of certain buildings in the city as well. Those hastily organized and rapidly performed inspections are reportedly not aiming to produce intricate mapping of infrastructure, but instead communicate data from surface areas that would allow human monitors and computer analysis to spot any signs of unexpected weakness created by the earthquake.

“Throughout the day, NYPD has (been) conducting flyovers in areas around the city with their drones, conducting surveys of building rooftops to look for structural damage and other potential areas of concern,” New York Department of Buildings press secretary Andrew Rudansky told radio station 1010 WINS/WCBS 880.

Among the authorities using drone footage captured by New York Police unit flights are Department of Buildings staffers sitting in on live streams and replays. Those are also fed through artificial intelligence applications that can immediately detect flaws in comparisons with pre-quake images.

“We are scanning the bridges up and down, looking for any type of anomalies, looking for any structural defects, looking for anything that’s out of the ordinary,”  New York Police Department deputy commissioner Kaz Daughtry told WABC news. “A brick, maybe a loose shaking.”

Of course, the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge was due to a container ship collision, not a relatively modest earthquake. Still, the ongoing fallout of Baltimore’s disaster has officials in New York taking no chances with potential structural weaknesses created by Friday’s shaking. 

For that reason, Department of Buildings commissioner Jimmy Oddo said captures of bridges and other structural scans are being scrutinized immediately to identify any immediate potential trouble spots. Those sites will then checked again in coming weeks to safeguard against currently hidden risks becoming visible.

“We at the Department of Buildings are concerned about some of the downstream possibilities, cracks that you might see that that may materialize and manifest in a week or a month,” Oddo told a news conference.

Image: Hannes Richter/Unsplash