56 Drone Mapping Boosts Response to Australian Flood Damage The small technology team in the South Australian State Emergency Service (SASES) has long realized that rescues and damage assessments could be achieved more swiftly and cost effectively with virtual eyes in the sky. The largely volunteer organization has been working with remotely piloted aircraft for years, building use cases and caches of aerial imagery while learning and teaching others about the latest tools. Amid that work, the team wondered what would happen when the unexpected occurred. “In January [2022], we found that out,” said Sara Pulford, who oversees GIS technology for the service. That’s when the heavens opened and let loose a record amount of rain, the fourth wettest January in South Australia and the most precipitation the area had seen since 1984. The storms submerged a key highway running north to south and severely impacted Australia’s transcontinental railway running west to east. The damage, in such an inopportune location, The South Australian State Emergency Service has embraced drones for assessing and mapping adverse situations from above.
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