Calling UAViators: Enter the Contest for Humanitarian Use of UAVs

I know in talking to some of you via email and phone that there is a growing awareness of the role of UAVs (aka drones) in emergency management. This field is rapidly, rapidly growing — a couple of days ago I heard on national radio that the FAA had approved commercial use for UAVs for BP in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, and authorized seven film production companies to use them. Of course, that is a bit of whistling in the wind as there are tens of thousands of UAV flights happening right now for commercial purposes in violation of FAA rules — and still they dither.

This post is to announce the droneprize, an award for submitting the winning video showing how UAVs are being used for humanitarian purposes. I would love to see folks from the emergency management community submit entries — hopefully a winning entry.

Drones: Let's get rid of that term. I much prefer Patrick Meier's UAViator (wave-i-ator) term and drones as UAVs. If you are serious about learning more and keeping up on this rapidly emerging emergency management issue, I suggest you tune into Meier's group uaviators.org. Drones suggest dark death coming from the sky, military espionage and all kinds of scary uses. Unmanned aerial vehicles are going to be with us in a wide variety of forms for the foreseeable future. If the people intending good with them don't step up, the drones will be left in the hands of those with darker purposes. Don't let that happen.