Coordinating Drone Assessments

Deciding what gets flown during an emergency, and avoiding overlap.

Why coordination matters

In past responses, several organizations have flown the same area independently, without knowing about each other. That wastes scarce drone capacity, confuses the authorities who issue flight permissions, and leaves other priority areas unmapped.

Coordination does not need to be complex. At a minimum, everyone needs to know who is flying, where, when, and why.

Much of this page describes a large emergency response, with a dedicated coordinator and an assessment working group. Smaller projects, and community mapping outside an emergency, often have neither. In that case, the same idea still applies: tell the local authorities and any other organizations flying nearby what you plan to do, and ask whether someone already holds imagery of the area.

The basics

The key points:

1. Register before you fly. Tell the in-country aerial assessment coordinator (or the assessment working group, if there is no dedicated coordinator) what you plan to do, before you do it. Share your flight plans in advance where you can.
2. Requests go through the coordinator. If you need imagery of a site, raise the request with the coordinator rather than commissioning a drone operator directly. This keeps a clear picture of what is being flown, and stops two teams being sent to the same place.
3. Use local capacity first. If a trained national or regional drone team is available, engage them before bringing in an international one.

Making a request

A good request answers four questions:

• Where? The site, or area of interest (often shortened to AOI), ideally as a drawn boundary on a map.
• What decision will this imagery inform? For example, choosing a site for a displacement camp, or checking whether a bridge is passable.
• By when? Imagery that arrives after the decision has been made is of little use.
• Any known constraints? Security, access, or authorization issues the team should know about.

Prioritizing requests

When there are more requests than teams can cover, the coordinator needs to weigh up:

• Severity - how badly the site is affected, and how many people are affected.
• Is there another source? Could existing satellite imagery or an already-planned flight fill the gap instead?
• The decision and its deadline - what the imagery will be used for, and how soon.
• Feasibility - security, flight permission status, and distance from the team's base.

Overall priorities are set by the people leading the humanitarian response (for example an UNDAC team, or the national disaster management authority). The aerial assessment coordinator turns those priorities into a flight schedule, and divides tasks as quickly as possible.

Who does what

Where there are trained local drone teams, they should fill as many of these roles as they can, including coordination.

Including a representative of the national authorities in the coordination group is valuable. They can resolve permission and administrative issues that outside organizations cannot.

Remote vs in-country coordination

A remote network of partners can help establish coordination early: connecting organizations that have drone capacity, sharing standards, and giving advice in the first days.

But aerial assessments are very hard to coordinate from a distance. Knowing which local operators have which equipment, getting flight authorizations, and agreeing priorities all need someone on the ground. Ideally, every response has a named coordinator in country, working as part of the existing assessment coordination structure rather than alongside it.

Tasking tools such as the Drone Tasking Manager can help split an area into tasks and track who has flown what. They support coordination, but don't replace it.

How a response unfolds

These phases describe a large emergency response. Adapt them to the size and needs of your project.

Before a disaster (preparedness)

Preparation at this stage has the greatest impact. Where possible:

• Assess capacity. Know which organizations and local operators have drones, what equipment they have, and how to contact them.
• Understand the local setup. Who handles flight permissions? Does the national disaster agency have mapping capacity? After Hurricane Melissa struck Jamaica in October 2025, it took around a week just to understand how local actors were organized. During the flash floods in Nepal in August 2026, the right contacts were found within hours, because the groundwork had been done.
• Collect baseline imagery. Images taken before a disaster help teams assess damage afterwards. After Cyclone Gita hit Tonga in 2018, earlier drone imagery helped assess building damage, check damage claims, and plan school rebuilding. Flying beforehand also lets you identify take-off spots, arrange permissions, and resolve problems without the pressure of a response.

First days: initial assessment

• Satellite imagery and, where available, flights on planes or helicopters give the first overview.
• Organizations planning to fly register with the coordinator.
• Regular coordination meetings start. In the first weeks of a large response these are often daily; smaller responses may need far fewer.
• In the first 24-48 hours, partners quickly share: who is deploying, which areas they plan to cover and when, any permission or access constraints, how data will be shared, and whether drone assessments are even feasible and needed.

By this stage, everyone should know who coordinates flights and how to share the data.

Detailed assessment

• Drones capture detailed maps (and sometimes video) of priority sites identified from the first overview.
• Teams use the imagery to assess damage, access, and impact on people, updating their findings as new imagery comes in.

Monitoring and handover

• Teams keep monitoring for follow-on hazards, such as landslides or flooding after an earthquake or cyclone.
• Partners may ask for specific imagery to check or correct their earlier assessments.
• When aerial assessments end, hand over the imagery, processed data, flight plans, and flight logs to the agreed local owner, with the agreed access restrictions (see Data Handling).

International teams often leave before this stage. Working closely with local actors from the start, and keeping records others can pick up, makes the handover far easier.