Unmanned Aircraft Systems to Support Environmental Applications within USACE Civil Works

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has identified a number of research and development (R&D) opportunities to help reduce disaster risks, including cost-efficient technology, such as unmanned aircraft system (UAS) technology for accurate, detailed, and timely two-dimensional and three-dimensional monitoring of coastal and riverine landscapes.

Army Corps of Engineers, Washington, DC

Coastal and riverine shorelines are dynamic landscapes that change continually in response to environmental forces. The combination of static infrastructure with dynamic and diverse landscapes creates management challenges for navigation, storm damage reduction, and ecosystem health that are exacerbated during natural disasters. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) flood risk management (FRM) mission strives to reduce the nation's flood risk and increase resilience to disasters. FRM is inherently interdisciplinary, requiring accurate identification of environmental, physical, and infrastructure features that can reduce risk from flood and coastal storm disasters.

USACE has identified a number of research and development (R&D) opportunities that will help reduce disaster risks, including: identifying better technologies for hazard identification pre- and post-events; developing an interdisciplinary understanding of physical, chemical, and biological recovery processes that occur post-event; and providing shared and easily accessible, up-to-date data sets that can be utilized by flood and coastal storm modeling and predictive tools to inform emergency response.