Fort Collins implements Drone as a City Resource program
Fort Collins’ Drone as a City Resource program takes DFR a step further. Shared Skydio X10 drones live on rooftops throughout the city where dispatchers can launch them in seconds, putting aerial support to work across police, fire, water, utilities, and more.
This video shows one example where the police department’s drone team identified a river flow obstruction for the city’s water department in just 10 minutes, a situation that would typically take hours to locate on foot.
- The city of Fort Collins utilizes drone as a city resource, and what makes that
- a little bit different is we have shared drones throughout the
- entire city
- that live on rooftops of various fire departments.
- Our dispatchers can launch them as they're answering a call for service
- for whatever reason, and get a bird's-eye view of what
- is occurring on
- the street within seconds. That's a game changer for not just the
- police and
- fire, the traditional users of drones, but for every department
- inside the city.
- Having the conversations with utilities and power, we quickly realized
- how much the drones could be used for.
- We found out that there's a flow obstruction,
- and so some guy will drive all the
- way out to a river
- and walk up and down it to try and find the obstruction.
- When I was doing the demonstrations for water, they were like, "Hey, actually,
- we've got one down at Fossil Creek right now that we were about to send somebody,"
- and I flew the drone down there, and within five minutes, we
- were able to see the
- obstruction. Just that cost savings alone, a three-hour job
- and two to three people might've been before, now is a 10-minute job and a
- one-person response if we need it.
- We're pretty excited to be able to apply drones to our tools to
- use. When we have outages, we're 100% underground, so there's
- nothing visual to see. Usually, when something happens
- to an underground failure, the lid will blow off the top
- of a, of a manhole or something, and we can identify the
- location of that failure or outage point.
- This could apply and, and shorten the lengths of our outages as
- we move
- forward.
- I'm appreciative that we work for an organization
- and a community that's
- open to ideas like this and, uh, uh, willing to be
- collaborative for the benefit of all.
- So the Drone As A City Resource program is one that is being led by Fort Collins
- Police Services, but really embraces all aspects of the
- city.
- It's water, utilities, you name it.
- They have access to a drone, and we can make their job more efficient
- and
- safer for everybody. [dramatic music]
Watch Time
1 Mins 59 Secs