How to Reduce Police Emergency Time Operation with Drone Operation Management Platform

Firefighters, civil security officers, customs, police... Drone technology is gradually integrating all public safety sectors. Under the newly established European regulatory framework, the deployment of drones on a large scale requires the implementation of tools to optimise and secure operations management. Many government drone operators are working to optimise the duration of emergency operations and increase their efficiency. A drone operations management platform reduces both the response time and the duration of operations, and thus the associated costs. Read on to find out how and why.

The current cost of police emergency operations

According to the UK National Police Air Service (NPAS),   it costs around £1,700 an hour to operate a helicopter.

Each helicopter flight is expensive, as the cost includes:

• Acquisition of equipment
• Maintenance
• Fuel
• Operators

However, drones are much lighter, their energy consumption is low, and both the initial purchase and maintenance are inexpensive.

All obvious advantages over helicopters.

In the United Kingdom , Dorset Police was the first force to acquire its own drone unit, and each deployment costs at least one-third less than using the NPAS.

In 2019, the Dorset Police force estimated that it had already saved £170,000.

Drones also represent certain advantages compared to land vehicles, as the former enable public safety forces to intervene much more quickly – and discreetly – in inaccessible or dangerous areas. Fewer teams and fewer vehicles are thus involved in surveillance  operations, making them comparatively less expensive.

Optimising drones fleet management leads to more cost-efficient operations

For security and privacy reasons, legislation^[1] requires drone operators and pilots to comply with a certain number of rules .

Mandatory operations include:

• Deployment planning
• Risk assessments
• Flight logs
• Checklists

These "administrative" operations are commonly managed using traditional office IT tools (spreadsheets, word processing software, etc.), which is time-consuming and labour-intensive.

Fortunately, there is a more modern alternative: the use of a drone management platform.

According to Chris Flannagan, Founder and Director of TLP Ltd. – drone security specialists, this new approach can save users a lot of time and therefore money. He and his team compared both methods – Here are the results:

In conclusion, Chris Flannagan believes that using such a platform allows him to save more than 3 working days per month, which is quite a feat.

Additional benefits of drone operations management platforms

Beyond saving time for the police, these drone operations management platforms present other advantages:

• Real-time data collection during operations
• Monitoring of the flight status and battery life
• Management of maintenance requirements
• Secure storage of data, in accordance with European legislation
• Secure communications during interventions
  

Conclusion

Compared to helicopters, drones can save you hundreds of thousands of  pounds/euros for your police emergency operations.

And thanks to drone management platforms, it is possible to further optimise your time and the cost of your operations.

Want to find out more about drone operations management platforms?

^[1] EU Regulations 2019/947 and 2019/945