Grey Jay, Montana First Nation and Mundialis Launch Drone and Satellite Partnership

Grey Jay, Mon­tana First Nation and Ger­man remote sens­ing com­pa­ny Mundi­alis have signed a mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing to devel­op com­mu­ni­ty-owned drone and satel­lite ser­vices for Indige­nous and rur­al com­mu­ni­ties across Cana­da.

The part­ner­ship will com­bine Mon­tana First Nation Man­age­ment Inc.’s on-demand drone oper­a­tions with Mundi­alis’ satel­lite imagery pro­cess­ing and geospa­tial data capa­bil­i­ties. Grey Jay, a Cana­di­an non-prof­it focused on equi­table air mobil­i­ty, will sup­port the col­lab­o­ra­tion.

The organ­i­sa­tions plan to estab­lish a ser­vice cov­er­ing drone deliv­ery, wild­fire mon­i­tor­ing, forestry and envi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment, and emer­gency response. They are tar­get­ing full com­mer­cial oper­a­tions by 2027.

The planned “Aer­i­al Intel­li­gence as a Ser­vice” mod­el is intend­ed to pro­vide com­mu­ni­ties with local­ly con­trolled aer­i­al and satel­lite data. Drone imagery would com­ple­ment satel­lite infor­ma­tion, allow­ing more detailed mon­i­tor­ing of spe­cif­ic areas while pro­vid­ing broad­er geo­graph­ic cov­er­age through satel­lite-based analy­sis.

For wild­fire response, the part­ners plan to use ther­mal and mul­ti­spec­tral drone imagery along­side satel­lite map­ping to mon­i­tor fuel loads, iden­ti­fy poten­tial hotspots and track fire perime­ters. The ser­vice could also sup­port com­mu­ni­ties that do not have ded­i­cat­ed local wild­fire mon­i­tor­ing resources.

Oth­er planned appli­ca­tions include forestry and water­shed man­age­ment, with mon­i­tor­ing of veg­e­ta­tion health, sur­face water and wider envi­ron­men­tal changes. The part­ners also envis­age drone deliv­ery ser­vices for remote com­mu­ni­ties and indus­tries, as well as med­ical logis­tics, search and res­cue and oth­er pub­lic safe­ty oper­a­tions.

Mon­tana First Nation has pre­vi­ous­ly worked with Edmon­ton Inter­na­tion­al Air­port and logis­tics part­ners on a drone deliv­ery pilot between the air­port and a clin­ic in Leduc, Alber­ta. The new part­ner­ship is intend­ed to build on this work while devel­op­ing a com­mer­cial ser­vice that could even­tu­al­ly be offered to oth­er Indige­nous and remote com­mu­ni­ties and indus­try cus­tomers.

Mundi­alis will pro­vide satel­lite data pro­cess­ing and geospa­tial analy­sis, using cloud-based work­flows and open-source geospa­tial tech­nolo­gies. MFN will oper­ate the drone ser­vices, while Grey Jay will con­tribute to the devel­op­ment of the wider air mobil­i­ty and logis­tics frame­work.

The organ­i­sa­tions also plan to devel­op local tech­nol­o­gy and work­force capa­bil­i­ties as the ser­vice expands. The ini­tial focus will be on estab­lish­ing the oper­a­tional and com­mer­cial foun­da­tions need­ed for com­mu­ni­ty-owned aer­i­al intel­li­gence ser­vices in Cana­da.

Thomas Sleightholm

Thomas is a con­tent writer for eVTOL Insights, cov­er­ing all aspects of the glob­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem. Got a sto­ry for him? Please send an email to editorial@evtolinsights.com

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