Evaluating the contribution of drones to building community climate change resilience

RESEARCH QUESTIONS
How do communities that are at risk from the impacts of climate change perceive the use of drones for improving community resilience?
How effective are drones in reducing community risks to climate change?
Is the effectiveness of risk reduction by drones different depending on the techniques/operations of use?
Do different drone operations affect the distribution of risk between national, local government and community emergency survey teams?

HYPOTHESES:
(i) For communities improving their climate change resilience, drones can provide significant positive benefits when compared to other existing DM processes.
(ii) The use of local drone survey teams is associated with higher benefits, lower costs and lower risks than the use of automated flight techniques and technologies, such as beyond visual line of sight flights and robotic drone swarms.

BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 13 is 'Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts'. Climate change induced hazards (ie, flooding, cyclones/hurricanes, landslides, heat waves, droughts and wildfires) have the potential to cause catastrophic impacts to people and communities world-wide and in 2018 more than 39 million people were affected by climate change. The IPCC 6th Assessment Report confirms that extreme weather events are due to increase the number of populations that are exposed to hazards and, therefore, will face increasing risks. Climate change hazards can increase the risk of threat to life, infrastructure, mental health, violence and displacement.

Globally, storms are becoming more frequent and violent, such as Cyclone Idai (2019, Southern Africa), Hurricane Maria (2017, northeastern Caribbean), and Storm Evert (2021, UK). These effects can be compounded for coastal communities. Coastal zones are often in low elevation areas, can be densely populated, exposed to flooding, erosion and infrastructure damage. These storms are causing severe socio-economic impacts as coastal communities often depend on tourism and seasonal work.

In order to identify ways to increase the resilience of societies to climate induced disasters, solutions must be implemented after rigorous evaluation. The evaluation process must take into account not only the effects the risk could have on individuals, communities, political and cultural environments, but also what the effects of the risk reduction measures might have. It is only then that effective structural and systemic changes can be successfully implemented.

Drones offer potential innovative solutions to improving community resilience to climate change. Drones can be used for pre or post disaster mapping, increasing situational awareness, search and rescue and delivery of supplies. This project will focus on the impact on communities of implementing drones for disaster risk reduction and how those communities perceive their use.

Additionally, the study aims to evaluate if there are inherent risks, both physical and ethical, associated with using drones for DRR. Findings of this research will enable a greater understanding of the costs/benefits of using drones and inform future policies regarding the deployment of drones to improve community resilience to climate change induced risks.

The study will focus on communities from three separate coastal regions from Roseau, Dominica (Caribbean); Beira, Mozambique (Africa); and Cowes, Isle of Wight (UK), to evaluate if there is a different outcome based on the income level of a community.