12-03, 09:00–13:00 (America/Belem), Room Mangueirão (C Block)
Summary
The Drone Tasking Manager (DroneTM) is a suite of tools for communities to use low-cost, safe, accessible drones to collect high-quality aerial imagery and data on the scale of thousands of square kilometers.
The Problem
Drone imagery and data is useful for mapping, disaster resilience, and a variety of humanitarian, development, and economic activities, but drone mapping tools have not been well-adapted to community use in development and humanitarian contexts—until now.
While imagery acquisition by local communities using small, lightweight drones is possible, the tools for doing so are mostly proprietary and not well-adapted to local needs. Commercial flight planning applications such as Pix4D Capture, DroneDeploy, Litchi, Dronelink, and similar programs do not work with recently-manufactured low-cost drones, and are not effective for multiple users to coordinate their efforts, making them ineffective for colllecting imagery and data over large areas.
The Solution
DroneTM, built by HOT and Naxa with support from the World Bank's Caribbean Disaster Risk work, GFDRR, OpenDroneMap.org, and many others, is a Digital Public Good for everyone, but particularly intended to support local communities who don't have budgets for expensive equipment and software. It's Free/Open Source Software made by, with, and for communities.
The Workshop—Practical Commmunity Drone Operation and Data Acquisition
In Belém, we would like to offer a workshop in which participants will:
- Use the Drone Tasking Manager desktop application to create projects, defining and Area of Interest to cover with multiple drones by multiple teams concurrently.
- Use the DroneTM mobile Web app to create, access, and download individual flight plans for low-cost drones
- Execute short (~15minute) automated drone flights using the DroneTM flight plans (we encourage people to bring their own drones, but we will supply several drones—properly registered and and legal to operate—so that everyone can experience it).
- Process the resulting data into orthophoto images, Digital Elevation Models, and 3D meshes (using OpenDroneMap as part of the DroneTM back end)
- Import the orthophoto images into QGIS for visualization. We won't have time—or scope—to get into use and analysis of the imagery, but people will be able to get it loaded up into a QGIS canvas and ready for use.
Participant Profile
We hope to welcome participants who are:
- From, working with, or supporting communities with actual needs and/or projects that can benefit from aerial imagery and data. We especially hope to welcome those who have not been able to access drone technology due to barriers related to cost and complexity.
- Interested in testing, supporting, or using drone technology and meeting like-minded folks
- Interested in advocating to regulatory agencies, donors, and other stakeholders to promote inclusive, community-based drone empowerment
- Due to existing inequities in the drone and tech sector, women will be prioritized for hands-on practical flight operations experience
Participant Requirements
- Owning or bringing a drone is not required. However, any participants with drones that are legally permitted to fly in Brazil are encouraged to bring them, particularly the DJI Mini 4 Pro (other drones are supported, but only the DJI Mini 4 Pro is guaranteed to work at this stage; there will be updates to the list of compatible devices before the workshop).
- Drone piloting experience is not required. We will cover the basics of manual flight, but the DroneTM flights will be automated and supervised by experienced operators.
- Laptops are useful for the project creation module. Those who do not have laptops will be able to follow along on a projector.
- Reasonably decent-spec Android devices are helpful to explore the mobile app.
Format
This session will be a practical, hands-on workshop including an outdoor flying component (weather, permissions, and safety permitting).
Rough Agenda
- 0:00 - 0:15: Introduction of presenters, facilitators, and participants
- 0:15 - 0:30: Overview of DroneTM purpose and usage
- 0:30 - 1:00: Project Creation; define an AOI and parameters for imagery needed
- 1:00 - 1:20: Introduction to mobile app, download flight plans, inspect them, and load them onto the drones
- 1:20 - 1:30: Break (possibly also troubleshooting for those who didn't get their flight plans loaded correctly)
- 1:30 - 1:45: Proceed to outdoor flight location
- 1:45 - 2:00: Pre-flight checklists and safety orientation
- 2:00 - 2:30: Fly!
- 2:30 - 2:45: Return indoors, launch processing
- 2:45 - 3:15: Break + networking. While imagery is processing, participants will discuss their context and potential uses for drone imagery and data
- 3:15 - 3:45: Viewing results of the flights, loading into QGIS and other FOSS tools, discussion of possible analysis and use
- 3:45 - 4:00: Session evaluation and questions
Ivan Buendía Gayton works at the nexus of humanitarianism, technology, and human rights. Prior to joining HOT in 2017, he worked for fifteen years with Médecins Sans Frontières in various capacities including Head of Mission, field logistician, Humanitarian Affairs Officer, and GIS and Technological Innovation Advisor, and served on the board of directors of MSF-Canada. He co-founded the Missing Maps project, worked on medical records for Ebola, and created the MapSwipe mobile mapping application. He is an advocate of Free Software, and considers it critical to racial justice and equity, particularly in the aid sector, and believes that “local people, local devices, and open knowledge” are key to effective humanitarian tech and inclusion. He works on local manufacturing of drones in low-income settings, and low-cost, high-precision surveying for community and smallholder land rights.