DJI, the world’s leader in civilian drones and aerial imaging technology, launched an online reference to track events around the world when a drone helped rescue someone from peril.
The Drone Rescue Map, available online at https://enterprise.dji.com/drone-rescue-map, shows how more than 400 people around the world have been helped by drones in more than 200 emergencies, and will be continually updated as new rescues occur.
The DJI Drone Rescue Map has been compiled from news stories and social media posts from authoritative sources such as police departments, fire departments and volunteer rescue squads. Each entry on the map includes the location and date of the incident, a brief description, a link to the original story or post, and an easy way to share those incidents online. To make the map as definitive as possible, DJI encourages public safety agencies to share additional drone rescues so they can be included.
“The DJI Drone Rescue Map is now the best global reference for how effective drones are in emergencies, and allows the world to see the tremendous impact drones have had in finding lost people, shortening searches, reducing risks to rescuers and saving lives,” said Romeo Durscher, DJI Senior Director of Public Safety Integration. “Public safety workers already know how drones are revolutionizing their work, and now the rest of the world can see their amazing stories in one place. The DJI Drone Rescue Map honors the incredible rescues they’ve made, and will allow everyone to see how drones help save people in the future.”
The DJI Drone Rescue Map includes instances of drones finding people lost in forests, fields and mountains, often in darkness using thermal imaging cameras; dropping life preservers to people struggling in water; locating boaters stranded on remote waterways; and helping rescue people who were at risk of harming themselves. The map does not include incidents when a drone is simply used as part of a larger search process; instead, a drone must have directly located, assisted and/or rescued a person in peril.
Many of these incidents illustrate how drones can find missing people more quickly than a traditional ground-based search, allowing victims to be brought to safety faster, more easily, and with less risk and burden for their rescuers. In some of the incidents on the DJI Drone Rescue Map, the drone helped accelerate a rescue and allow first responders to operate more efficiently. In other incidents, the drone clearly made the difference between life and death.
The map includes rescues recorded in 27 countries across five continents, and shows how drone technology has moved from an experimental concept to standard public safety equipment. Today, drone rescues are reported about once a week on average, and public safety agencies routinely share those success stories on social media.
Brendan Schulman, DJI Vice President of Policy & Legal Affairs said “The DJI Drone Rescue Map is a powerful resource for policymakers to understand the impact drones have on protecting vulnerable people in their own communities, and the detrimental consequences of policies that would restrict or discourage the use of drones, or increase the cost of using them. Regions with less favorable operating rules for drones appear to have substantially fewer reports of drone rescues.”
DJI has previously released two detailed reports on how drones have been used to rescue people from peril around the world. The first, in 2017, counted 59 people rescued by drones, and the second saw the global total rise to 124 by 2018.
