As part of the new initiative on application of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Disaster Assessment, Monitoring and Recovery, the SIGUS UAV Team attended the international disaster conference in New Orleans. (Note: UAV is the polite term for drones.) After the conference, the UVA Team met with partners in Houma on the Louisiana coast to discuss and test the use of UAVs in disaster assessment.

At the IDCE expecting to hear "great things" on the experience of using UAVs in disasters, the SIGUS Team was disappointed to learn that the speaker cancelled.  Thereupon the SIGUS Team took over and did their presentation on UAVs which they had prepared for their Houma partners.  Well received by the 110 members in the audience, they were invited back by the organizers for next year's conference!

Sinead Cheung and Jacob Shearman, SIGUS UAV Team members after their presentation in small group discussions.

After conference the UAV Team met with their counterparts in Houma, to the south on the Louisiana coast: Terrebonne Readiness and Assistance Coalition (TRAC), Bayou Area Readiness and Recovery Committee (BARR), and the Terrebonne Office of Homeland Security. A presentation was made to the assembled groups, and demonstration flights were undertaken. Click here to see the video of the test flights.

A sample of aerial images from the UAV test flights:

A typical small road in the bayou.

Testing of flights in the center of the bayous

Flight over Houma Mardi Gras parade to text crowd control potential