UAS Usage After A Hurricane

Hurricanes in America are one of the deadliest natural disasters. The golf coast and the southeast coast get many hurricanes every year varying in strength. Even though hurricane Florence was only a CAT 1 hurricane it causes immense flooding, destruction, and some loss of life. Drones could be instrumental in search and rescue after hurricanes. Most high-quality drones with cameras such has the DGI phantom 4 have GPS along with waypoints and altitudes set. If thermal cameras were attached to a drone such as the phantom 4 search and rescue operations could be run 24/7 right after a hurricane. Multiple platform could be flown at once in a zig zag grid formation. The zig zag grid flight pattern could be set up by using the GPS waypoint system. Once the drone finds a survivor the drone could either go into hover mode until rescuers arrive or they can mark the GPS location on a map and give it to the rescuers so they can go get the person while the drone continues to search for people. Rescuers could also fly the drones into unstable partially destroyed buildings to look for survivors instead of sending in a person and risk their life. This would a great use for the platform and could make rescue operations faster and safer.  A final use that could be used for the drones after a hurricane would be using them to measure water levels and look for dangerous hazards with different types of sensors. One of the hazards to rescuers in the water would be down powerlines that can’t be seen. These are some very useful way to use drone platforms after a hurricane to make search and rescue efforts much safer, faster, and efficient.