Chennai Corporation to launch drones to help residents in inaccessible areas during disaster

Greater Chennai Corporation will launch drone as a service to help residents during disaster, to identify inaccessible locations that require supply of medicine and food during heavy flooding and during emergency.

During this north east monsoon, GCC will monitor each of the flooded localities in all the 15 zones of the city, improving relief and rescue operation for residents, as the drones have better visual capturing capability than a human may have in adverse surrounding situations during a disaster event. During heavy floods, a resident who calls helpline 1913 is likely to receive medicine and essential items in inaccessible areas, utilising drones as a service, if the project becomes a reality. “Drones will play an important role in rescue and relief operations of GCC,” said an official.

Ahead of the onset of the north east monsoon on October 27 this year, the drones will also strengthen monsoon preparedness. The drones will start monitoring of micro canals, check whether the canals have been desilted. Once the canals are found to be clogged, the drones will enable the GCC engineers to capture real-time, highly accurate data, and that too in the most cost-effective manner.

In addition to disaster management, GCC will utilise drones for monitoring of Pallikaranai and Kodingiyur landfills. GCC will also improve beach surveillance utilising drones. Officials will also deploy drones to start monitoring of vending zones and no-vending zones, road encroachments, retriving of GCC land, urban greening project, asset mapping and regulation of hoardings.

GCC is likely to use drones in intervention for planning permission to cottage industry and institutional use. GCC is also planning to curb the menace of solid waste dumping in rivers utilising drones for river front monitoring, especially to prevent solid waste dumping in the rivers. Engineers of GCC will monitor if the workers have removed construction and demolition waste from canals and roads ahead of heavy rains.

Drones are set to have a special role in event management of GCC, monitoring of cables of internet service providers and telecom service providers. As a large number of complaints about street lights and road cuts were received during the previous monsoons, GCC is planning to monitor road cuts by different departments and curb illegal road cut, monitor the status of street lighting and identification of dark spots ahead of the rains. Drones will also facilitate data augmentation for LiDAR based survey of city.

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