The Polish perspective of using unmanned aerial vehicle systems in international firefighting and crisis management missions - legal and technological analysis

• Published in: Conference proceedings (International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems. Online) pp. 1478 - 1487
• Main Authors: Balcerzak, A. Tomasz, Jasiuk, B. Ewa, Fellner, C. Andrzej, Feltynowski, D. Mariusz
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 15.06.2021
• Subjects: Crisis management; Europe; Forestry; Industries; Law; Organizations; Streaming media
• ISSN: 2575-7296
• DOI: 10.1109/ICUAS51884.2021.9476800

The subject of using UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) in extinguishing activities during large-scale forest fires is described in the scientific literature. For example, the Web of Science service for the period 1990-2018 recorded 308 publications related to UAV and forest fires [1]. These are mainly analyzes and studies on remote fire detection, monitoring, mapping, architecture and technology integration. There is a noticeable growing interest of researchers in the subject of using machine learning to detect and predict the spread of fires using unmanned aerial vehicles [2]. At the same time, analyzes are carried out on the ad-hoc creation of local data networks using drones [3], or drones as an element of the Internet of Things (IoT) [4]. In the operational context, concepts and solutions such as water transfer and extinguishing with UAV are only being tested. [5]. Another important challenge is that current firefighting civil aviation regulations only allow firefighting manned aircrafts to operate between first and last flight due to safety concerns for pilots, limiting the operation time to an average of 12 hours, which leads to many fires reactivating at night. This paper will analyze the legal and technological polish perspective of Unmanned Aircraft Systems usage in international firefighting and crisis management missions.