USING drones to map urban heat, as well as in wildlife and forensic investigations, will be focusses for a new research unit involving Hawkesbury researchers at Western Sydney University (WSU).
The Drone Research and Teaching Unit (DRTU) will be launched in the new year, centralising activities involving remotely-piloted aircrafts (RPA) – or drones – at the University, for both research and teaching purposes.
Dr Sebastian Pfautsch from the WSU School of Social Sciences and Psychology said ten people have been trained-up so far from the Hawkesbury, Parramatta South and Bankstown campuses to fly drones for the project.
He said the DRTU model will allow the uni to negotiate with the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) - which regulates the use of drones - to use drones in designated ‘no fly’ zones, including the airspace surrounding the Richmond RAAF base which is shared by the Hawkesbury campus.
“We will negotiate directly with the RAAF base operators to work out the time windows when we can fly,” Dr Pfautsch told the Gazette.
He said the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment’s (HIE) EucFACE site - which maps the effects of exposure to rising CO2 levels on native forests and animals - currently sits in the ‘exclusion zone’, but from early next year, his team will be able to use drones there for wildlife surveillance.
“These are not the one thousand-dollar drones from the toy store shelf - these are about $30,000 each and have heat seeking cameras in them. And locations will be due-referenced, so when it tells you that you were at a location, you really were there!” Dr Pfautsch said.
He said the drones would be used to look at local flying fox colonies with a view to counting them. “Using temperature instead of just visuals, it’s much easier to estimate how big these colonies are,” he said.
“I also want to use them to look at ‘heat island’ effects in urban landscapes. I want to look at where trees should go to make Sydney cooler - the urban canopy, where do you put it?”
The drones will also be used in teaching geographic information science (GIScience), with students potentially being able to fly drones to get 3D models of surfaces for geospatial analysis.
“There are lots of different uses - the sky’s the limit! We have the opportunity to be really creative here,” Dr Pfautsch said.
According to Dr Pfautsch, if the DRTU program is successful, the uni will attempt to get funding and expand the operation after 12 months.
Dr Pfautsch said the drones will also be used in forensic investigation research, “to remodel a birds-eye view of accidents to see if it’s worthwhile looking from above.”
Other areas of research will include land use change, fauna surveying, precision agriculture, energy management, bridge surveys, building performance, drought assessment, and insect/disease monitoring.
Teaching areas will include undergraduate and postgraduate courses in arts, creative industries, engineering, forensics, social and environmental sciences, tourism and urban planning.
Western Sydney is the first Sydney-based University to formalise its drone operations.
