UAVs-more opportunities than threats

Amazing nature photography displayed together with the most advanced custom-built UAVs as well as a whole range of off-the-shelf solutions from Ferenc Damak and his Team. It was a great idea to promote a positive image of drones, such as the slideshow of the best pictures of the Second drone photograpy competition. Especially when one reads only the English press about the II. Drone Conference & Expo organized by HungaroControl - Hungarian Air Navigation Services, where the economic and innovation potential of UAV technology was highlighted. Actually the headline is the correct quotation from the Hungarian minister of innovation and technology as I was privileged to listen to his presentation in the room along with 300+ professionals from all range of industries and professions. Without questioning the superior role of aviation safety and security, it is rather unfortunate, that Hungarian media covers the event as "the fight, that has to be started against illegal drone activities". The same conclusion could be taken while listening to the representatives of the Police and other National Security representatives - illegal drone users will be penalized, in spite of the fact that at the same roundtable the legislative and practical discrepancies in the wide area of 'grey zones of operations' were explained too.

Many of the speakers highlighted the advancement of the drone legislation of Poland, one example is PWC's center of excellence, where large infrastructure projects are overseen by UAVs and data is processed by sophisticated workflows. In Hungary Antal Kerekes is leading this field of business innovation with millions of EUR growth potential.

As a personal take-away of the day: it is worth looking at the slide from Hungarocontrol's director Attila Simon and data from Roland Berger, the breakdown of the number of expected drones by 2020 (yes, it is only two more months to come..) and realize while government operations are only in the range of 100-1000 units, hobby users will own about 100 times more drones. As an addition to that just as jaw-dropping to see the predicted number of daily and peak hour drone flights in Hungary total and in the economically better advanced Central Hungarian Region, as the study published by Sándor Dobi, Krisztina Horváth and Dániel Rohács suggests.

The majority of the operations foreseen as 'Open' category UAV (or rather using the EU terminology Unmanned Aircraft System, UAS) flying lower than 120m above ground level. After the event I hope that those thousands of hobby nature photography enthusiasts (and many internationally recognized professionals, as Csaba Daróczi), who are helping city dwellers getting closer to the beauty of the remaining natural wonders of Europe, can sustain a responsible and safe way of continuing their groundbreaking work of awareness raising.

To reach this, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) also has its pace of work regarding regulations, last month the Guidance Material and several other supporting documents were published for safer drone operations in Europe. And just after the keynote speech delivered on Friday, Minister Prof. Mr. Palkovics signed a cooperation agreement with Patrick Ky, the executive director of the Agency to raise the standards of aviation safety in Hungary - perhaps with the agenda that safe drone flights will support both private and business activities.

#uav #easa #naturephotography #dronephotography #aviationsafety #hungarocontrol