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From sea rescue and agriculture to the monitoring of technical facilities – there are many possible applications for drones.
„"Soon we will probably also be able to use the missiles as standard in sea rescue and coastal protection."“
From sea rescue and agriculture to the monitoring of technical facilities – there are many possible applications for drones. The potential of “Unmanned Air Mobility” (UAM) to make logistics and mobility more sustainable is to be researched at the former Leck military airfield in the joint project “UAM-InnoRegion-SH”. The project group includes the North Friesland Economic Development Agency (WFG NF), the West Coast University of Applied Sciences in Heide, the Flensburg University of Applied Sciences and 70 participating companies, institutions, clubs and associations as well as the municipalities of Klixbüll, Leck and Tinningstedt. The project is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).
North Friesland’s District Administrator Florian Lorenzen says: “Leck is to become a research center for peaceful drone applications. This technology could already be used to deliver medicines or defibrillators to remote areas with the necessary speed. In agriculture, it is already common practice to track down fawns with drones before mowing. Soon we will probably also be able to use the missiles as standard in sea rescue and coastal protection.”
One of the participating companies is BioConsult SH from Husum. The office for nature conservation expertise and biological research and development projects has almost 120 employees and is researching the effects of drone flights on wildlife in the Wadden Sea as part of the UAM-InnoRegion-SH. “The use of drones in ecological monitoring is incredibly promising because we can cover relatively large areas with high spatial resolution. We believe that drones are very good at closing the gap between aircraft surveys and time-consuming inspections in order to count seabirds and shorebirds, measure grey seals and harbor seals or map mussel beds and seagrass meadows,” reports Anna Kersten from BioConsult SH. “We can still only assume that the disturbance caused to wildlife by drones is relatively low, but we now want to find out systematically with reliable data.” APIS (Aerial Photogrammetric Integrative Surveys) is the name of the research project that is now being funded by UAM-InnoRegion-SH.
“We are delighted to be able to attract up to eight million euros in federal funding to the region over the next three years,” says Florian Lorenzen about the BMBF’s funding of the research project as part of the “WIR! – Change through innovation in the region” funding program. “The research funds are well invested in creating and securing jobs through innovative mobility and logistics.”
„"We believe that drones can bridge the gap between aircraft surveys and time-consuming inspections to count seabirds and shorebirds, measure gray seals and harbor seals or map mussel beds and seagrass beds."“