The fleet of safety drones from Citymesh are mounted with 4K cameras and 5G radios, and give local police and fire services a rapid assessment of incidents before dispatching crews.
Belgium-based private cellular specialist Citymesh has launched 70 5G-connected ‘safety drones’ to support local emergency services. The new service, branded SENSE, will provide “police stations and fire stations” in Belgium with a 15-minute visual head-start to collect critical information about incidents before emergency services arrive on the scene. Citymesh said 4K video images are sent from the drones to control rooms via a “5G network from Citymesh”.
Emergency services in the country have been issued with the SENSE ‘drones-in-a-box’ solution. The project was trialled in 2018 with services in the Fluvia fire brigade in Kortrijk, in West Flanders, as well as with the Brussels Airport Company (BAC) at Brussels Airport, and port authority at the Port of Antwerp-Bruges. The first “full integration” was completed for fire and police services in Genk in mid-2022.
Two drones have now been made available in each of the 35 rescue zones, to cover the entire country. On receiving an emergency report, a drone, mounted with a 4K camera and a 5G radio, sets off to collect critical information “in the first 15 minutes”, said Citymesh. The camera can record “thermal images enriched with AI”, to distinguish and detect smoke plumes, fires, and people, it said. Citymesh called it a “world first”.
The drones are operated by pilots in remote operations centres. Their safety is “guaranteed by an unmanned traffic management (UTM) platform in which all flights are logged and coordinated,” it said. Citymesh stated: “Thanks to 5G, the drones can be controlled remotely and there is a reliable high broadband connection for the drone and the video images. The emergency services can therefore view the images in real time, even before anyone is on site.”
Citymesh said the Belgian police and fire services receive two million calls per year, and take action in response to all of them “based on incomplete information”. It stated: “They often do not know what awaits them when they turn up. In that initial chaos, they lose precious time. As soon as the emergency services receive a call, a safety drone can automatically take off and fly to the scene of the disaster to take [and send] accurate images.”
Hans Similon, general manager for safety drones at Citymesh, said: “By scaling up the number of Safety Drones to 70, we want to create a drone grid across Belgium as a tool for the emergency services – something that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world. We are the first to move from a ‘smart city’ to a ‘smart country’.”
Mitch de Geest, chief executive at Citymesh and a former firefighter, commented: “SENSE is at the crossroads of those three knowledge fields (5G, drones and emergency services). It is therefore no more than a logical step for Citymesh to immediately launch the world’s first drone grid after the pilot project, to support the emergency services. This is how my greatest passions come together nicely.”
