Plumes of grey ash mixed with gas ex­plode vi­o­lent­ly over the La Soufrière vol­cano in St Vin­cent, spread­ing far across the sky. In Ice­land, the mas­sive Mount Fagradals­f­jall vol­cano spouts red-hot la­va high in­to the air and over the sides of its crater, trans­form­ing the land­scape with omi­nous or­ange-black ooze. Drones have been hov­er­ing near­by, bear­ing wit­ness to these re­cent events and bring­ing vi­tal in­for­ma­tion back to dis­as­ter man­age­ment au­thor­i­ties and the pub­lic.

Drone tech­nol­o­gy is be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly im­por­tant in the way hu­mans op­er­ate and re­spond to crises. Its life-sav­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties are end­less, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing COVID.

Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of Rec­trix Drone Ser­vices Ltd, An­tho­ny Vieira, in a re­cent in­ter­view with Sun­day Guardian, said, "My take is risk a drone, not a he­li­copter or a life. Af­ter hur­ri­canes and oth­er nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, drones are de­ployed not on­ly to con­duct search and res­cue, and search and re­cov­ery, but al­so dam­age as­sess­ment on prop­er­ties, elec­tric­i­ty dis­tri­b­u­tion, wa­ter con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, as well as, to aid in restor­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions by func­tion­ing as trans­mit­ters or re­lay sta­tions."

The tech­nol­o­gy can al­so sup­port dis­as­ter man­age­ment ef­forts by pa­trolling for peo­ple who should have evac­u­at­ed and for those in dis­tress, and by drop­ping sup­plies of med­i­cine and food, Vieira said. As a re­sult, the ex­po­sure of search and res­cue per­son­nel to dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions and con­di­tions is min­imised.

When COVID first struck in Wuhan, Chi­na, drones with in­frared cam­eras and PA sys­tems were used to call peo­ple to their win­dows to mea­sure their tem­per­a­ture dur­ing the lock­down. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, drones car­ry­ing up to ten litres of EPA-ap­proved dis­in­fec­tant were used to sani­tise the city. Re­leas­ing spray from ten feet above the ground, sev­er­al drones cov­ered up to 600,000 sq kms in one day; a task which he said, would have in­volved 100 work­ers risk­ing their lives.

Apart from their use by pub­lic health and safe­ty agen­cies, sig­nif­i­cant ad­vance­ments in drone tech­nol­o­gy have seen them be­ing adopt­ed by in­dus­tries like con­struc­tion and oil and gas for mon­i­tor­ing equip­ment and con­duct­ing in­spec­tions; agri­cul­ture to ob­serve crops and spray fer­tilis­er and pes­ti­cides; com­mu­ni­ca­tions to cre­ate tem­po­rary cel­lu­lar, WiFi and high-fre­quen­cy ra­dio sig­nals and se­cu­ri­ty to pro­vide sur­veil­lance and emer­gency man­age­ment. Aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phers show­cas­ing scenery, events or re­al es­tate and hob­by­ists al­so ben­e­fit from the tech­nol­o­gy.

Orig­i­nal­ly de­vel­oped for the mil­i­tary, over the last 20 years these pi­lot­less ro­bots have been adapt­ed for com­mer­cial pur­pos­es, Vieira said. They are known as Un­manned Aer­i­al Ve­hi­cles (UAVs), Un­manned Air­craft Sys­tems (UAS) or Re­mote­ly Pi­lot­ed Air­craft Sys­tems (RPAS). They are ei­ther op­er­at­ed re­mote­ly by a drone pi­lot us­ing a ground con­trol sys­tem or are au­tonomous, func­tion­ing on their own af­ter a flight plan is set.

Com­pared to he­li­copters, which have been the air­craft of choice in dis­as­ter man­age­ment and safe­ty op­er­a­tions, drones are quick­er to de­ploy, cheap­er to op­er­ate and can stay air­borne longer. They can car­ry sen­sors sim­i­lar to those on he­li­copters like op­ti­cal, dig­i­tal or ther­mal cam­eras, he said.

A re­tired he­li­copter cap­tain for most of his adult life Vieira has seen the world from a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive; a qual­i­ty that has made his tran­si­tion to drone tech­nol­o­gy quite nat­ur­al.

In his 19 years of fly­ing with Bris­tow Caribbean and Na­tion­al He­li­copter Ser­vices and in­struct­ing pi­lots, en­gi­neers, oil and off­shore work­ers in Sea Sur­vival for Pi­lots and Pas­sen­gers, and in He­li­copter Un­der­wa­ter Egress (or Es­cape) Train­ing (HUET), he said he has learnt the val­ue of safe­ty and ap­plies this to his drone ser­vices.

Hav­ing sup­port­ed the TTPS in Sur­veil­lance and Re­con­nais­sance (SR) dur­ing Car­ni­vals 2019 and 2020 and a mem­ber of the ODPM UAV Vol­un­teer group, he shared his per­spec­tive on this coun­try's readi­ness to im­ple­ment as­pects of drone tech­nol­o­gy. De­scrib­ing the use of drones here in T&T as still "rel­a­tive­ly new," he ex­plained, "...that is be­cause of leg­is­la­tion and lack of aware­ness and ac­cep­tance by com­pa­nies, in­sti­tu­tions. The TTPS is now com­ing of age by in­vest­ing in drones and con­tract­ing spe­cial­ist sup­port as and when need­ed."

He ob­served that there was a need for more re­sources and train­ing, sug­gest­ing that drones could fill gaps in na­tion­al he­li­copter and Air Guard units stunt­ed by high costs of equip­ment, op­er­a­tions and main­te­nance.

Vieira stressed the ben­e­fits of the tech­nol­o­gy, es­pe­cial­ly as the coun­try grap­ples with COVID. He said with per­sis­tent breach­es in Trinidad's North Coast and South West Coast, drone sur­veil­lance could de­ter il­le­gal en­try and hu­man traf­fick­ing. Op­er­at­ing in stealth mode at night, par­tic­u­lar drones could re­main air­borne for five-ten hours while re­lay­ing a "Live Stream" from pow­er­ful op­ti­cal and ther­mal cam­eras which could de­tect warm, mov­ing bod­ies in seacraft and those hid­ing in the bush­es.

Drones could be flown in ar­eas to make PSAs (Pub­lic Ser­vice An­nounce­ments) is­su­ing warn­ings for peo­ple not wear­ing masks and con­gre­gat­ing, to dis­perse. They could be al­so ben­e­fi­cial in mon­i­tor­ing busi­ness­es like bars, some of whom break cur­rent re­stric­tions. Rather than shut down an en­tire sec­tor, on­ly those found in con­tra­ven­tion would be dealt with, he said.

For bor­der con­trol ex­er­cis­es, he rec­om­mend­ed drones with longer en­durance or flight times such as the Ver­ti­cal Take­Off and Land­ing (VTOL) drone which re­sem­bles a small re­mote-con­trolled plane and does not re­quire a run­way or take­off dis­tance, and au­tonomous drones which fly on a pre-pro­grammed route and have pow­er­ful op­ti­cal zoom and ther­mal imag­ing as well as an­ti-col­li­sion lights.

Drone footage

Oth­ers like the Sky Man­tis made in the UK, the Sky­dio X2D and the Par­rot Anafi, both de­vel­oped in the US, have quick de­ploy fea­tures, mak­ing them able to be­come air­borne in as few as 60 sec­onds af­ter ar­rival at a scene of in­ves­ti­ga­tion–a must-have in con­duct­ing po­lice work.

Vieira al­so in­di­cat­ed that there were se­cu­ri­ty drones with tear gas dis­pensers for crowd con­trol in protests, for in­stance, which re­duce risks to pro­tec­tive ser­vices of­fi­cers.

He said be­yond sim­ply pro­vid­ing drones, he aimed to con­duct re­search in­to tech­nol­o­gy tai­lored for spe­cif­ic chal­lenges and train oth­ers in their use. He was hap­py to re­port that Drone Fa­cial Recog­ni­tion Soft­ware they test­ed ear­li­er this year had proved promis­ing.

In terms of out­fit­ting the fire ser­vices, fire­fight­ing drones could be em­ployed, he said. One type used in Chi­na could shoot a ball of Dry Pow­der to put out fires. Lo­cal­ly, a teth­ered sys­tem with op­ti­cal zoom and a ther­mal imag­ing cam­era could al­low an in­ci­dent com­man­der to re­lay in­for­ma­tion in­def­i­nite­ly to fire, po­lice and army and in­di­cate if a fire had been com­plete­ly ex­tin­guished.

Ex­plor­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of pro­vid­ing drone sup­port in the re­gion, Vieira said one of their VTOL brands could fly up to ten hours for some 200 km which could mean fly­ing to Grena­da and oth­er is­lands to of­fer help.

"200 km al­lows us to fly to Grena­da. If we put a portable re­peater on Grena­da, we can ex­tend the range and fly it up to and be­yond St Vin­cent. We even can look at the use of drones to sup­port vol­ca­nol­o­gists in mon­i­tor­ing cer­tain vol­ca­noes. The tech­nol­o­gy is awe­some," he said.

Q&A with An­tho­ny Vieira, cur­rent FAA PART 107 SUAS pi­lot

In terms of nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, search and res­cue, in what weath­er con­di­tions drones op­er­ate?

You would find your typ­i­cal hob­by drone is not de­vel­oped for flight in rain. Some drones that are de­vel­oped for the res­cue ser­vices would have IP rat­ings, the high­er the rat­ings the more weath­er and high winds they can take. (Sky Man­tis from the UK with­stands winds up 89 km an hour, Ma­trice 300 RTK from Chi­na for high winds and heavy rain.)

Each drone has op­er­at­ing re­quire­ments in­clud­ing tem­per­a­ture and weath­er lim­i­ta­tions such as rain, dust, sun and wind. Your av­er­age drone can fly in winds of about 16 to 37 km an hour.

You were one of the stake­hold­ers who met with the ODPM ear­ly last year to of­fer re­sources to strength­en their dis­as­ter man­age­ment ca­pac­i­ty. How would you sup­port them?

Of­fice for Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment is a di­vi­sion of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. They saw the need to in­cor­po­rate drones to sup­port dur­ing cri­sis and emer­gency. You have the peren­ni­al is­sue of flood­ing and then search and re­cov­ery/res­cue. They sent out a re­quest for vol­un­teers and a num­ber of peo­ple re­spond­ed. The ODPM UAV Vol­un­teer group was formed, head­ed by Er­ic Mack­ie. We have last year re­spond­ed to help search for a flood vic­tim un­for­tu­nate­ly washed off a bridge in Williamsville. We re­spond­ed to a miss­ing la­dy in Gas­par­il­lo and then of course, to the oil spill in the Godineau Riv­er. I'm proud of the group as every­one makes the ef­fort to re­spond no mat­ter time of day or night.

Your com­pa­ny fol­lows the guide­lines of the T&T Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty (TTCAA). What le­gal and eth­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions are in­volved in fly­ing drones lo­cal­ly?

Un­manned air­craft must give way to manned air­craft. In in­te­grat­ing drones in­to the na­tion­al air­space, care must be tak­en to avoid col­li­sions with tra­di­tion­al air­craft. In­ter­na­tion­al­ly and lo­cal­ly Civ­il Avi­a­tion has re­ceived nu­mer­ous re­ports of drones op­er­at­ing in prox­im­i­ty to air­craft. That is where our com­pa­ny is go­ing in that we are work­ing to sen­si­tise the pub­lic and pro­vide train­ing on how to op­er­ate these drones safe­ly.

The reg­u­la­tion states you can­not op­er­ate Cat­e­go­ry 1 UAs (Un­manned Air­craft) high­er than 100 feet, nor Cat­e­go­ry 2,3,4 or 5 UAs high­er than 400 feet but do you know I have seen videos and heard peo­ple say­ing they took a chance and flew to 5,000 and 6,000 feet?

We have re­strict­ed and pro­hib­it­ed air spaces that the pub­lic doesn't know. These in­clude POS (TTR1) SFC–2500’; Ch­aguara­mas (TTR6) SFC—2500’; the Ca­roni Sanc­tu­ary (TTP4) Na­ture Re­serve; Pt Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate (TTR9). We op­er­ate with per­mis­sion from PLIPDE­CO and the TTCAA.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, drones are not op­er­at­ed for good pur­pos­es on­ly. TTCAR #9 speaks to per­mis­sion re­quired to fly over peo­ple's prop­er­ty and film. You may have heard from the Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons at a re­cent Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee that drones are be­ing used to drop con­tra­band in the pris­ons and this is hap­pen­ing all over the world, so we al­so need to con­sid­er an­ti-drone ca­pa­bil­i­ty–drone jam­mers.

It was re­port­ed that a drone was used to mon­i­tor the where­abouts of some­body in the En­ter­prise area last year and short­ly there­after he was shot and killed...or they could use the drone for drop­ping IEDs (Im­pro­vised Ex­plo­sive De­vices). That is be­ing used by ISIS and re­cent­ly by the Houthi mili­tias in Yemen. Saudia Aram­co suf­fered se­vere loss­es when drones dropped home­made bombs on a cou­ple of their pump­ing sta­tions forc­ing them to shut down half the king­dom’s oil pro­duc­tion.