Emergency situations such as natural disasters put thousands of human lives at risk each year, expecially childrens lives. Drones have great potential to quickly reach highly inaccessible areas, survey vast areas in a short time and generate large amount of data. Despite this, their use in emergency response tasks and prevention is still limited by the high cost of equipment, the lack of knowledge of their potential by emergency services and the coordination of voluntary operators with official rescue services and aeronautical authorities.

Intelligent flight systems allow search and rescue teams to perform efficient searches and collect accurate flight data. The system supports real time data sharing for airspace management and multiple drone operations coordination. Through this solution, the company aims to: 1) make more efficient searches, 2) facilitate data collection and analysis (especially for flooding), and 3) increase the availability of drones & operators to be readily deployable in case of an emergency. They have partnered with Uruguay’s National Emergency Agency for the project.

During the 12 month investment period the company will focus on developing and testing the drone management system; creating a platform to connect volunteer drone operators with emergency agencies, and developing algorithms for flooding detection/prevention.