Empowered Startups

Using Unmanned Aerial Systems (Drones) to Predict, Detect, and/or Manage Climate Events

This student team attempted to create a unmanned aerial vehicle (drone) prototype that governments and agencies can use to feed data into a remote software. This drone could have sensors that will detect conditions in the environment (i.e. wind, speed, moisture or temperature) and shares that data to assist in efforts to predict, identify and/or manage climate disasters and to deliver help and supplies to survivors (i.e. deliver medical supplies to survivors in remote locations, trigger water supply changes, or emergency relief). An example of such a technology that exists is the Internet-of-Things (Iot) being used to help predict forest fires. Relevance: The climate emergency has intensified with extreme weather events becoming more frequent and powerful. In 2022 alone, the U.S. experienced extreme tornadoes and heat, in Southern Europe extreme droughts caused water bodies to dry up, and Pakistan experienced the worst flooding in the nation's history brought on by a massive monsoon that blanketed a third of the country under water triggering a massive crisis.