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DONEGAL WILL BE at the centre of a pilot scheme which will help shape the rules regarding drone usage among emergency response teams.
Both the European Emergency Number Association (EENA), an NGO dedicated to improving emergency services, and drone company DJI announced a partnership which would see it training first responders to use drones in emergency situations.
One of the two groups taking part in this trial is the Donegal Mountain Rescue Team, a organisation made up of volunteers across the county.
Team member, Leo Murray, said the organisation had been testing drones for the “past nine months” conducting tests, but the new partnership allows further testing over the summer.
“The announcement [from EENA and DJI] was on the back of the relationships we’ve built up,” he said. “DJI and EENA have come on board toe be part of a pilot test for the summer because they’re putting together compliance and regulations of drone applications in emergency services and they want to see the best way of doing it”.
We’ve been at it for about nine months testing it and we’ve had positive results but there are further tests needed over the summer.
Since the volunteer organisation has experience in drone usage, partly thanks to a Donegal startup called Drone App Labs developing some of the software needed for live feeds and tracking, the pilot scheme will look at developing networking and crowd-sourcing capabilities.
That’s something the rescue team already does as it regularly works with the Irish coastguards’ ground-based teams and boat units since some of the mountainous areas are based along the coastline. Roughly 40% of its calls are coastline based according to Murray so it makes sense to expand upon this.
“We would be looking at doing trials with them as we know they’re interested as well,” says Murray. “So you’re looking at cliff areas, bays and areas that are inaccessible or hard to get to so that’s where we see the application”.
The main objective of a drone is to enhance the personal view and get a visual overview in advance of the team actually reaching it… we can get a drone to send back live imagery. We would be able to asses that imagery and inform the different search parties to go to different areas.
A live view of remote or hard to reach areas is one of the things drones can be used for, but the team is experimenting with other uses.
One would be dropping payloads to someone remotely to help them out while another area they’re looking at is thermal imagery, giving it the ability to perform night searches using heat signals to find people.
Overall, such a scheme allows the organisation to further step up their tests and see where their strengths lie. Yet they’re not seen as a replacement for anything, just as a way to compliment existing protocol.
“It’s really just an extra tool in the toolbox,” says Murray. We are thankful [for the pilot scheme] because we are voluntary and we don’t have money to buy this equipment… it’s an opportunity for us to use and get the benefits of them”.
I do see their use coming into emergency services just because we can get live imagery for remote locations very quickly… [and] speed up search and rescue operations.
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It’s beyond a joke. We are constantly being battered by advertising every bloody second of the day. I agree some works, but Certainly NOT all. As in the case of Renault and RTE. Sometimes we need a break from the ad breaks!
Beautiful ironwork and craftsmanship gone into this bridge and many others around the country,a crying shame to cover it up with advertising for multinational billionaires,who do naff all only take their profits and run…take the advertisements off them and have them cleaned/repaired/restored to the original beautiful structures they once were.
Has the Ballybough Pride of Place group contacted Councillor McAdam to inquire whether the signage requires planning permission or falls under exempted development that doesn’t need approval? As a planning committee member, he must have some expertise on this matter.
That James Bulger story is one of the scariest and saddest things I’ve heard of on a longtime. I’d like to say I won’t put photos of my kids on the Internet but the fact is other people can do it. Regulations are so far behind.
@Lad: What regulations would you propose?
If anyone cared, the bridges even with tasteful signage, could be nice to look at. If you look at the bridge over the river Boyne, when the light are on at night , it looks great. The same bridge is over the roads at Churchtown, it looks horrible.
I suppose the thing to do would be to just discuss topics from other articles on the ones where the comments are actually open.
Does anybody really pay attention to the ads, or are they in any way influenced by then. Personally I never, ever, pay attention to an advertisement.
The elites want Blade runner style full motion Building advertising facades polluting our citys. This is to keep the normies from thinking..The sountrack from these Advertisements will be ’5G’ d into the sheeples bluetooth ear buds. With the sheeple living in a trance they wont hear the NWO thanks coming around the corner smashing into Croke park
Ballybough is just the start of it. by 2026 enormous airships will fly close overhead, with both video and audio advertising even in small towns like Ennistymon.
@Chief Of police Retired – Truther MAGA Trump 2024: What are you smoking? Can I have some?
More ads
More brides
More suitors
We need to feed the economy
Keep rowing!
on the subject of psychological implications of covid advertising, it appears it really hasn’t gone away. Despite the fact that at least a year after many states reported their own data to the unaccountable WHO regarding the collapse of their covid figures, when you contact the hse attempting to give feedback or access people you first have to go through a complete ringer of them trying to connect you to covid options. I recorded six recently, before you reach someone who’s totally unlikely to identify themselves you need to ask.
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