FeaturedNews

Pearland Police expands drone as first responder operations without visual observers

Pearland Police Depart­ment has been award­ed a cer­tifi­cate of autho­ri­sa­tion to oper­ate its drone as first respon­der (DFR) pro­gramme for beyond visu­al line of sight (BVLOS) oper­a­tion, elim­i­nat­ing the need for human visu­al observers by using Iris Automation’s Casia G ground-based air sur­veil­lance sys­tem.

Pearland is a rapid­ly grow­ing city south of Hous­ton, Texas, with a pop­u­la­tion of 129,600 and 179 sworn police offi­cers, and cov­ers a most­ly res­i­den­tial area of 49 square miles.

Drones allow first respon­ders to be on-scene vir­tu­al­ly in min­i­mum response time to relay crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion to oth­er police offi­cers, fire depart­ments or para­medics, reduc­ing the over-deploy­ment of resources.

Pearland Police Depart­ment assis­tant chief Chad Ran­dall com­ment­ed: “In a cli­mate where per­son­nel short­ages are impact­ing first respon­ders across the nation, hav­ing a ful­ly BVLOS drone as first respon­der pro­gramme great­ly enhances resource allo­ca­tion while main­tain­ing a high lev­el of sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness for first respon­der safe­ty.”

Oper­at­ing BVLOS removes the require­ment for the oper­a­tor to be co-locat­ed with the drone. The DFR pro­gram uses Iris Automation’s Casia G sys­tem as an alter­na­tive means of com­pli­ance to the Title 14 Code of Fed­er­al Reg­u­la­tions (CFR) Part 91.113 ‘see-and-avoid’ require­ment.

Iris Automa­tion CEO Jon Damush added: “Pearland PD has been oper­at­ing Casia G sys­tems since last sum­mer, col­lect­ing and analysing per­for­mance data and sub­mit­ting it to the FAA, which result­ed in this approval.

“It is an impor­tant exam­ple of how a con­cept of oper­a­tion (CONOP) com­bined with our ground-based sys­tem mit­i­gates air-col­li­sion risk by enabling BVLOS oper­a­tions and we are proud to be part of Pearland’s safe­ty case.”

Drone Respon­ders Pub­lic Safe­ty Alliance direc­tor Charles Wern­er con­tin­ued: “This land­mark approval for Pearland PD enables drones as first respon­ders to help emer­gency respon­ders to max­imise resources, while mak­ing com­mu­ni­ties across the nation safer.”

Com­ply­ing with 14 CFR 91.113 ‘see and avoid’ has long been the bane of the UAS indus­try, as the removal of a pilot from a cock­pit removes a lay­er of risk mit­i­ga­tion for avoid­ing mid-air col­li­sions.

The FAA has required the use of human visu­al observers in any UAS oper­a­tion to mit­i­gate this risk despite humans not being the best solu­tion to this prob­lem. Part 91 gov­erns avi­a­tion oper­a­tions from pri­vate recre­ation­al fly­ing to cor­po­rate char­ter and oth­er com­mer­cial oper­a­tions.

Pub­lic Air­craft Oper­a­tors, like Pearland PD, oper­ate under 14 CFR 91, as opposed to 14 CFR 107, wide­ly referred to as the ‘drone rule’. The approval was secured by Pearland by rig­or­ous­ly devel­op­ing a con­cept of oper­a­tion (CONOP) that lever­ages tech­nol­o­gy to mit­i­gate risk.

Casia G is a pas­sive, ground-based air sur­veil­lance sys­tem, which cre­ates a vol­ume of mon­i­tored air­space with­out the need to inte­grate any hard­ware onto the drone itself, using patent­ed com­put­er vision tech­nol­o­gy, alert­ing the Remote Pilot in Com­mand (RPIC) to an intrud­er.

Avatar photo

Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

eVTOL Insights is part of the Industry Insights Group. Registered in the UK. Company No: 14395769