Drones and Aerial Observation: our primer for New America is finished!

On August 14, 2015 By Faine GreenwoodIn aid, drones, TechnologyLeave a comment

We’ve finally done it: the “Drones and Aerial Observation” primer I’ve been working on for New America with support from the Omidyar Network and Humanity United has been released into the wild. Ever wondered how drones can help with peaceful endeavors, from disaster response, to conservation, to archaeology? We have you covered.

With this book, I’m of the mind that myself, my colleague Konstantin Kakaes, and the drone experts who contributed chapters have created an overview of drone technology accessible to people who don’t already know what a “gimbal” is. (Yes, I am aware that is a funny word).

We hope the book will encourage people to start thinking of drones as a tech they can practically use for their own field endeavors. While drones certainly look complicated when you first encounter them – at least, that’s how I felt about them – it’s a tech that’s remarkably accessible to people who don’t have aeronautical engineering PHDs.

You can download the whole shebang as a PDF, or you can also download individual chapters. Share it, print it out, tell your friends, tell us what you think, tell your friends what you think.

On my end, I wrote chapters 4 and 5: “How to Make Maps with Drones” and “Mapping in Practice.” Writing these chapters was a real crash-course in drone mapping for me, and I’m grateful to come out the other side alive and with a better sense of what’s required to carry out mapping projects. I hope I can pass that on to you. I’m also planning to get my own mapping drone in the very near future so I can start carrying out some of this work myself.

I also wrote Chapter 9, which is a case study of the world’s largest archaeological drone mapping project, carried out by the Ministry of Culture in Peru. They were incredibly hospitable to me, and I had a great time watching the researchers deal with the quotidian, difficult, occasionally terrifying realities of making maps with drones in remote and difficult areas. Many thanks to Aldo Watanave and Dr. Luis Jaime Castillo Butters for taking me along for the ride. A Slate piece about this work is impending as well.

To celebrate the release of the book on July 22nd, we held a “Drones and Aerial Observation” symposium at our Washington DC offices. The half-day event featured a lot of great thinkers and practitioners on UAV technology, and from my admittedly biased perspective, I thought it went very well. You can see videos and slideshows of the panel discussions at this link.

I’d love to hear what you think about the primer, so feel free to reach out to me on Twitter or Facebook, or maybe even email. More drone-related writing and research coming up: watch this space!

dji S1000 pisaq BW — My favorite photo from my distinctly drone-focused trip to Peru.

How Drones can Protect Indigenous Land Rights – Latest for Slate

On July 17, 2015 By Faine GreenwoodIn aid, drones, southeast asia, TechnologyLeave a comment

The countryside in Flores. Which is not Borneo, but I like the picture.

Drones to the Rescue: how unmanned aerial vehicles can help indigenous people protect their land – Slate

My latest on Future Tense, documenting how inexpensive UAVs can help indigenous people (and other people without much access to resources) document where they live and what they own. From an interview with Irendra Radjawali, a fascinating Indonesian geographer who begun pioneering this kind of work with the Dayaks of Borneo, with some inroads into Papua and Bali. It’s really cool stuff.

I think this is going to be a particularly important usage of drones, and I hope to do more writing and research on that potential in the near future.

Nepal Disaster Response, and Please Don’t Just Go There With a Drone

On May 8, 2015 By Faine GreenwoodIn aid, dronesLeave a comment

About a week ago, I wrote an article for Slate about how drone pilots were assisting with the devastating earthquake in Nepal. Here’s the article, which is a general overview of the planned response – at the time of writing, not much had actually happened yet with disaster response UAV flights.

Patrick Meier, organizer of the UAViators collective of humanitarian drone pilots, filled me in on how the UAV teams affiliated with UAViators would work closely with humanitarian aid organizations and with local officials.. This coordination and organization would hopefully help prevent the skies over Nepal’s disaster areas from becoming dangerously choked with UAVs, flown by teams who weren’t working with or even aware of one another.

Unfortunately, Nepal has just banned the usage of drones without explicit permission from authorities. The stated reason fro Nepali authorities is that the drones could be capable of leaking “sensitive information and pictures of its valuable heritage sites .”

Maybe, maybe not, but you’ve also got to wonder if the influx of drones into Nepal – including those flown by journalists and others who didn’t liase with UAViators – helped to influence this decision. I’m not in Nepal, I don’t know much about Nepal, and I can’t say if that’s actually what happened or not. But as we’ve seen in Cambodia, drone use that isn’t very responsible and very well coordinated with local authorities can lead to hasty lawmaking.

Patrick’s written a great article about his observations from the Nepal disaster response, which you should really read. I especially think his point about building local capacity to do disaster response missions with UAVs is important. With the low price and relative ease of use of todays’ drone technology, here’s no reason why a country should have to wait for UAV teams from developed nations to get in the air.

I support everything he’s said, and would like to reiterate a point here: if you’re planning to book a ticket to Nepal and schlep your drone over there to help, don’t. Or at least, don’t do so without first contacting UAViators, following its Code of Conduct, and making a concrete effort to ensure you’ll be hurting, not helping.