[Special feature] Utilization of "drone", which is attracting much attention in disaster prevention | Life Ranger Topics

Over the last few years, we have seen more and more "○○ using drones" at events, including images taken with drones. There are a wide range of models on the market, from those that are small enough to fit in the palm of your hand to those that are large enough to carry your luggage. The use of drones is not limited to entertainment such as video. It is used for various purposes such as civil engineering construction, agriculture and fisheries, inspection for crime prevention, measurement and observation, communication, etc., and it is likely to attract attention in the future. At Life Ranger, we covered efforts to utilize drones for disaster prevention. Mr. Shoichiro Uchiyama, a research fellow at the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention, spoke with us.

Shoichiro Uchiyama (Photo: Provided by himself) Born in Sendai City, Miyagi Prefecture in 1978. He has been in his current position since 2003. After his admission, he completed the creation of landslide topography distribution maps of 400,000 locations nationwide in his first 10 years, and engaged in research and development of situation grasping technology for initial disaster response using drones in the past 10 years. .. His hobby is housework, especially cleaning.

The initial response in the event of a disaster (the stage where the disaster is revealed and helps people) is something like 119, and firefighters are on site after the command is issued by the headquarters. We will rush to the rescue operation. This directive shows a map and the location of the person who made the call, but conversely, it has only that much information.

When the scale of a natural disaster increases, the situation at the site, for example, if it is a landslide disaster, the current situation is that we are literally putting our lives to life without knowing the risk of a secondary disaster such as where the approach route is safe. is. It is technically difficult to get a bird's-eye view of the overall situation at the site.

"GEORIS" is a mechanism that enables working organizations for disaster response to make good use of drones in order to deploy initial disaster response safely and promptly. By using the drone properly, you can grasp the information of the entire activity site as a video or map without entering a dangerous place. You can better interpret that information and make more secure and reliable decisions to get to those in need or need help.

There are two important things to do in order to utilize a drone at a disaster site. One is to fly the drone safely even in dangerous places such as disaster sites. There are many things to consider, depending on multiple laws, weather, terrain, time of day, flight conditions of manned aircraft such as disaster prevention helicopters, performance of the aircraft used, number of batteries owned, purpose of field activities, etc. Even at the site of arrival for the first time, knowledge and skills to quickly formulate a flight plan suitable for the situation are required. Secondly, in order to read and judge the information collected by the drone, scientific interpretation skills of information to be utilized in field activities are also important.

The operation of a drone may seem simple, but as mentioned above, flying safely at a disaster site requires a number of professional judgments. For example, just as you cannot operate a ladder car or extinguish a fire with a pump car just by learning how to drive a car at a driving school, you cannot use it safely and effectively at a disaster site just by learning how to operate a drone. In particular, using drone information requires a certain amount of specialized skill. Unfortunately, there is no drone school that covers it now, so we built an educational program with "GEORIS" to solve this. This is one of the purposes of "GEORIS".

Looking at the news, you may have the impression that natural disasters occur frequently, but if you look at the units of individual local governments and individual fire departments, you will experience a truly major disaster once in your life. It is the encounter rate as to whether or not there is twice.

Therefore, even if you try to use the drone only in a big disaster, you do not know what to read from the information obtained in the face of unimaginable situations, and even though you have collected the information, you can not make good use of it. there is. Tools and information that you do not normally use cannot be used well in production.

Especially in the case of a disaster with a wide range of damage such as a landslide, a map that shows the situation at the site by flying a drone is effective. The reason is that if the house is flowing and the road is turned over and the utility pole is also collapsed, the target house is already gone even if you look at the map described in the dispatch order, the road is piled up with rubble etc. You can't see at all, you don't even know where you are.

Is it possible to visualize this situation so that it can be "understood"? Just looking at it from above with a drone is quite useful as information on initial disaster response, but it is easier to understand if you make a map, and you can write information there. You will be able to understand the situation on the map, such as the house here was originally there but has disappeared, or it was washed away from here.

image

Therefore, it is the use of "ortho image". An ortho image is a photographic map in which photographs directly below are taken continuously from a drone or an aircraft, and they are connected so that they overlap the map. Recently, it has come to be recognized that it is effective to quickly create an ortho image after a disaster occurs in order to grasp the situation at the site.

You need a map system to view ortho images and share them with your peers. However, as you can see that you can imagine the equipment of the firefighter, you go to the scene with full-body activity clothes, gloves and a helmet, and when you arrive at the scene, you are really doing rescue activities with one arm. increase. Of course, there are tools, but there is no map system that can put ortho images into them. If you use a drone to understand the whole situation from an angle and decide the approach route, even if it can be realized to that extent, there is still an easy way to see a large amount of information such as an ortho image. There is a problem that there is no.

You can send one or two photos by e-mail, but since an ortho image is a combination of many photos, one ortho image alone can be hundreds of megabytes, and a large one can be several gigabytes. increase. When this happens, of course, there is no high-performance PC at the site or fire truck, so even if you can create an ortho image at the site, there is no way to see it.

In this way, even though we are in an era where drones can easily create ortho images, there is a problem that people in the field do not have the means to see them. Viewing Ortho Images "Geographic Information System (GIS)" is software that allows you to view and create maps. However, it is very expensive and has specialized analysis tools, so it is rather software that researchers use. In other words, although it exists in the world as a tool, it is wasteful for people who just want to see ortho images on site to buy GIS software that costs millions of yen, there is no budget, and it is difficult to operate. Therefore, the sad reality is that professional software is completely unrealistic. Therefore, the second aim of "GEORIS" is to incorporate the concept of creating a simple GIS for people in the field to see ortho images.

To summarize the outline of "GEORIS", "knowledge education" to safely fly a drone and find useful information from it, and "map system" to easily see ortho images and utilize them for activities in the field. It is a set of two pillars.

I see, it's a program packed with Iroha to utilize a tool called a drone. I've learned a little about how drones and disaster prevention work together. Next time, I would like to ask you a concrete example.

Interview cooperation: National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention Uchiyama-sensei's book "New Edition Essential Drone Utilization Guide-Disaster Response Practice-" (published by Tokyo Horei Publishing)