Incident Management Drones

The EA works to help save lives and protect the environment. It is a category one responder and responds to thousands of incidents and potential incidents each year, including flooding, drought, pollution and waste fires across England. The EA intends to continue to use drones (UAV's) to obtain real time information about what is happening on the ground, to help respond appropriately to an incident and to help better understand how to respond to incidents in the future, for example the extent of a flood. The EA area incident rooms across England use drones where they are considered appropriate for incidents, such as sites where access is either not possible or not safe by other means. The use of drones helps the EA meet their incident management strategy needs by providing staff with the right information quickly, to enable them to carry out their role in responding to incidents. By having this information, they can make better decisions, which will help protect peoples' lives and livelihoods. The footage recorded by drones also helps the EA to learn from and prepare for future incidents.