Unmanned Aircraft System: Rapid Response for Natural Disasters

With the technology advances in UAS systems, which includes sensors and platforms, it is of great interest to federal, state, and local governments to fully exploit the unique capabilities of UAS, which are expanding rapidly, to meet mission requirements for responding to natural disasters. These organizations will benefit from the commercialization of research and technology development in UAS capabilities to help enhance response to natural disasters. Projects for this subtopic should include the design and execution of CONOPS utilizing UAS observing systems to enhance emergency response, crisis management and interoperable communications between organizations and agencies. This could include rapid deployment of UAS to provide critical information to the Incident Command, First Responders and PSAP (Public Safety Answering Points / 911). Products will provide appropriate response personnel situational awareness and actionable information useful during the response, damage assessment, and/or recovery phases of disaster response efforts. Fusion of information into existing communication and developing technology hardware is critical to saving lives, assessing situations and quick response disaster relief. Utilization of UAS systems will augment government organizations response capabilities and have a substantial impact benefiting society, the ecosystem and the environment. Proposal submissions should include a clear set of plans and protocols for intra- and/or inter- agency communications, indicating how these technologies and interactions would be executed both in advance of disaster and hazmat events as well as during actual disaster and hazmat response efforts. An area of interest is to improve UAS real-time/near real-time data and product dissemination and communications such that it can have an impact pertaining to the evolution of disasters or events. This could include but not limited to ingress / egress routes, locating and providing aid to those in need, etc. Concepts of operations for response must provide societal benefit.