Care examination in the disaster reaction in the air in the air

Response ink in the air new supply inspection contracts

From Dronelife Features Editor Jim Magill

Fortunately, although the 2025 Atlantic Hurricane season reached its peak without hitting the pension companies in the state in Florida, they continue to rely on companies that use UAS assets to carry out inspections to provide data that speed up the efforts to restore disasters.

The Airborne Response recently announced that two customers of electrical supply companies who serve millions of inhabitants in central florida receive drone inspection contracts. The unnamed medium -sized supply companies join a number of other companies in Florida, including the largest electricity supplier in the state, to contract such a service by Airborne, a 100 % subsidiary of Safe Pro Group.

“You have a patchwork quilt of various energy and power companies in which Florida's life is the largest,” said the founder and president of Airborne and President Christopher Todd in an interview. While many of the larger supply companies Florida Early Adoper of the drone inspection service that the company offers, “the smaller companies took a little longer to scale their programs and they really played it on the safe side. They do not have the resources of some of the larger companies,” he said.

The two recent contracts are a trend for medium -sized urban supply companies, “the desire to want to get into the game in the absence of a better word and to begin that drones to restore the power to restore the hurricane are to restore power,” said Todd.

According to the new contracts, Airborne will “record disaster reaction and aerial photographs in order to inspect and evaluate possible storm damage to the power grid infrastructure for larger storms, including hurricanes,” says the company's explanation. In addition, at the customer's request, Airborne agrees to provide the pension company not storm -related “Blue Sky” construction assessment services.

As part of the agreements, Airborne, who uses a fleet of Chinese drones and non-Chinese drones, only approved those UAVS who comply with the ban on drones from abroad that deal with state contracts.

Todd, which also leads the non -profit organization of the drone -response, which Airborne International Response Team, introduced in 2016 in Airborne to specialize in the use of drones for the emergency reaction to disasters that affect public security and critical infrastructure.

“By 2017 we had secured one of the first drones with a large supply company,” he said. Hurricane Irma Florida beat the same year. The mighty and slowly moving storm landed on Cudjoe Key and went north through central florida and other southeastern US states and left a way of destruction.

“We worked very closely with this utility, and that was really the benchmark year in which we could see how drones can be used for the disaster reaction, especially for activities for power supply,” said Todd.

Dan Erdberg, CEO of the Safe Pro Group, found that the current hurricane season could possibly be one of the most active storm seasons for South Florida. In June, scientists from the Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) predicted the US trade department that the chance of 60% was the chance of 60% that the Atlantic-Hurrican season, which lasts from June 1 to November 30, would be an above-average season.

By September 9th there was only a large Atlantic hurricane at the center of the season, which threatened the US hurricane Erin. While Erin, a category 5 storm, never landed directly on the US coast, dangerous conditions such as RIP currents brought along the east coast.

He said the contract that Airborne has with supply companies throughout the state help to ensure that the power customers in Florida will be prepared for the second half of the storm season. “Chris has done a phenomenal work to build an organization that can scale and provide the state of Florida the resources you need to ensure that civilians have critical power and communication,” said Erdberg.

Todd said that the relationship with Safe Pro, who acquired the airborne about two years ago, gave the subsidiary the company to support the company in order to be successful in a competitive environment.

“Some of these companies usually come and go, but we have a proven track record,” he said. “In contrast to many smaller drone companies, which may not have the resources that we have as listed companies on Nasdaq, we can make sure that we will be nearby for a while.”

Careful preparatory key for reaction

According to Airborne's contracts, a supply company becomes aware that a hurricane is on the right track to prepare for the introduction of its reaction after dismissal. Airborne puts the necessary resources, usually a drone and an operator, in position to be for use after the storm.

The type of type of drone devices sent to an outstanding disaster scene largely depends on the needs of the utility, said Todd. “There are usually minimal specifications on the drone. Sometimes it is only RGB-visually. Sometimes they want thermal skills and sometimes they want the advanced thermal skills with radiometric and everything else.”

In addition, as in the case of the two recent contracts in Airborne, the country of origin of the drone is often a big factor among the pension companies in Florida for the selection of a drone worker.

“If it is a stock corporation connected to the government side, we have to use Blue UAS type or NDAA-compliant drones that fall as an approved drone in the area of ​​responsibility of the legislator Florida,” said Todd.

He added that this restriction for his company has proven to be less stressful that it could be for some smaller competitors, since Airborne, under the company management of Safe Pro, has left from the use of DJI drones. The company's fleet now also offers skydio and parrot drones that meet the requirements of its most demanding customers.

After dismissal, the company's reaction is largely determined by the location and the extent of the damage caused by the catastrophe.

“It really depends on what the storm does,” said Todd. “We may have to fly thermal missions. We may have to carry out Turm inspections. We may have to map in the staging areas. There are a variety of missions that can emerge from the storm, but it really depends on what the storm does and how violent it is.”

In addition to providing visual inspection services, Airborne has started to offer a more comprehensive damage analysis that is driven by artificial intelligence (AI).

“In any case, we see how we can involve the AI ​​image recognition and artificial intelligence to help the supply company to map the damage, to determine where there are anomalies where there are defects and to enable faster restoration,” said Todd. “The entire key is to bring the network back into operation as soon as possible.”

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Jim Magill is a writer based in Houston with almost a quarter of a century experience in the oil and gas industry. After Jim retired as a senior editor at S&P Global Platts in December 2019, he wrote about emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, robots and drones and the way they contribute to our society. In addition to Dronelife, Jim contributes to Forbes.com and his work appeared in the Houston Chronicle, the US News & World Report and unmanned systems, a publication of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle, Systems International.