Mission
The ResponDrone Project mission is to enable emergency response teams to respond more rapidly, effectively and efficiently to an emergency or disaster and therefore save more lives. The fleet of drones will provide enhanced capabilities to support mission assessment, search and rescue operations, as well as forest fire fighting.
ResponDrone will increase the effectiveness and efficiency of civil protection operations by considering the first responder total mission time, cost, and success level.
The most critical part of responding to any (large-scale) disaster when the very first report of it has been received is the immediate response to obtain a comprehensive situational awareness of the disaster. If a disaster occurs in a large area, emergency response teams require an extensive understanding of the area struck by the disaster as fast as possible and real time information on, among others, the status of critical structures, the power grid, road access, the exact location of victims and environmental threats.
Collecting, processing, sharing and displaying this information as fast as possible after a disaster has occurred is challenging, especially when no reliable communications infrastructure is available. Quickly gaining an understanding of the situation in the disaster area, including the location of survivors, deployment and direction of first responder teams, and monitoring of mission progress resources is difficult for decision makers. Therefore, the more quickly a comprehensive overview of the area of disaster can be provided and a communications network be established, the faster first responders indeed can provide a coordinated response.