At this time of the year, many regions in the world are under alert due to possible torrential rains that could produce large floods, such as the ones that took place in Houston during the last days. In order to avoid big losses, both personal and material, it is necessary to take action for flood prevention—actions that are less costly and more efficient through the use of drones.

As it has been indicated, differently from a manned helicopter, the price of a drone is significantly lower. Therefore, with the same cost resulting from buying, maintaining, and operating a manned helicopter, we could have a fleet of drones to perform flood prevention actions, covering bigger areas and performing operations in a shorter period of time. All this considering that drones are also able to fly closer to the ground, permitting to take higher resolution pictures.

Flood Prevention actions with drones

Some of the actions that can be performed with drones for flood prevention are, for instance, the study of river basins, torrents, and low hillside areas in order to prevent any possible riverbed rise. Gathered data permits the creation of detailed maps indicating the inhabited areas more likely to suffer the consequences of floods.

Apart from cartography work, it is also advisable to develop maintenance and control actions in areas close to riverbanks and riverbeds. It is possible to detect quickly the most dangerous areas, performing these flood prevention actions with drones in order to efficiently organize and monitor cleaning operations in these areas.

It is also possible to perform monitoring missions of roofs in order to detect leaks of water and obstructions. Consequently, leakages and dampness that would affect the integrity of buildings and the formation of “pools” that may cause collapses in the structure would be easy to avoid.

We can conclude that flood prevention actions, necessary to avoid big losses, can be easily performed with drones. Besides, the advantages are far higher if these drones have all the features provided by Veronte Autopilot 1x. With Veronte, it is possible to pre-program operations in order to gather all the necessary information with the help of multispectral and RGB cameras, with no need for any supervision from operators, and once these operations are concluded, to perform all the considered actions for flood prevention according to the gathered information.