Working in a public safety agency is inherently dangerous.

All first responders, whether they work as police officers, firefighters, paramedics, or in search and rescue, know that part of their job is to be running toward danger while everyone else is running away.

But drones are mitigating this danger, helping make work safer for those at public safety agencies in several ways.

According to a 2020 report compiled by Bard’s Center for the Study of the Drone, out of 1,578 public safety drone programs in the U.S. 70% were in Law Enforcement, 20% were in Fire and Rescue, and 10% were in Emergency Management. While the number of drone programs at public safety agencies has probably grown since 2020, we expect that the breakdown of types of agencies using drones has probably remained about the same.

Below we’ll look at these three public safety categories and cover the specific ways that drones are providing safety benefits for the work each one does on a daily basis. 

How Drones Improve Safety for Police Officers Drones are being quickly adopted by police departments throughout the US. 

Drones are making work for police officers safer by providing them with aerial data in real time to guide their decision making in dangerous situations, such as when pursuing a fleeing suspect. They’re also making their work safer by helping them process accident scenes more quickly, and by creating orthomosaics of local buildings and other sites where an active shooter may someday crop up. 

Here are some of the ways that drones are making work safer for police officers:

How Drones Improve Safety for Firefighters Though we don’t hear about it quite as much as we hear about police applications, drones are being used in firefighting all the time.

Firefighting presents an obvious use case for drones because firefighters have a strong need to collect data remotely on the state of an active fire so they can understand how it’s burning, whether anyone is remaining inside that needs to be rescued, and other key details to guide their efforts.

Here are some of the ways that drones are making work safe for firefighters:

How Drones Improve Safety for Emergency Management Workers EMTs, paramedics, and search and rescue teams are also seeing real safety benefits from drones, though they may not use them as often as police and firefighters.

The list of use cases isn’t quite as long for this segment of public safety workers—but the safety benefits are significant. 

Here are some of the ways that drones are making work safer for emergency management workers:

Who Does the Work? As public safety drone programs become more commonplace most of them are using in-house pilots, but there are still some public safety agencies that rely on freelance pilots to collect aerial data for them. 

Public safety agencies are in the unique position of getting to choose whether they want to operate their drone programs under the FAA’s Part 107 rules or obtain a COA (Certificate of Authorization). Both options have their benefits—the Part 107 can be quicker to get, but the COA may allow for more types of operations, including flying at night or even BVLOS in certain circumstances.

Many public safety agencies choose to do both, having their pilots obtain Part 107s while they work toward getting a COA.

Did you know? In emergencies, public safety agencies can get an emergency waiver to fly BVLOS for a temporary period of time, called a TBVLOS. The T stands for Tactical—learn more about TBVLOS waivers here.

Learn more about using drones for public safety and emergency operations at Commercial UAV Expo. Special sessions focus on fire rescue, law enforcement, security and counter drone, and more.

Zacc Dukowitz has been reporting on the drone industry since 2016, when he began writing for UAV Coach. He currently works as Flyability's Content Marketing Manager, where he writes case studies, articles, press releases, and in-depth guides about drones and NDT inspection methods, as well as heading up Flyability's ongoing webinar efforts. Zacc continues to write for UAV Coach, where he reports weekly on breaking news in the industry.

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