By BOTT Desk
Drones offer tremendous benefits to almost all sectors of the economy like -agriculture, medicine delivery, mining, infrastructure, surveillance, emergency response, transportation, geo-spatial mapping, defence and law enforcement etc. An illustrative list of drone applications under different Ministries is attached herewith as Annexure- I.
As per Drone Rules, 2021, the operation of drones in zones marked red and yellow on the drone airspace map zones requires permission from the Central Government and the Air Traffic Control (ATC) authority respectively. No permission is required to operate a drone in a green zone which is where most of the drone operations currently happen.
Annexure -I
Illustrative list of drone applications under different Union Ministries
| S No |
Ministry |
Illustrative drone applications |
| 1. |
Agriculture & Farmers
Welfare |
- Crop and soil health monitoring
- Irrigation estimation and scheduling
- Requirement and efficacy assessment of fertilizer and pesticide spraying
- Anti-locust operations
- Crop output estimates
- River and canal erosion; restoration tracking
- Insurance claim surveys
|
| 2. |
Health & Family Welfare |
- Delivery of medicines, equipment and other
- supplies
- Pathology tests – sample collection from remote or epidemic/ pandemic affected areas
|
| 3. |
Panchayati Raj |
- Land records and property rights (SVAMITVA Scheme)
|
| 4. |
Defence |
- Surveillance
- Combat
- Communication in remote areas
- Swarm drone solutions
- Counter drone solutions
|
| 5. |
Home Affairs |
Surveillance, situational analysis, public
announcements and evidence gathering for:
- Security of sensitive installations
- Raids and counter-terror operations
- Crowd management
- Crime control
- VVIP security
- Disaster management; search and rescue; transportation of food, medicines and essentials
- Traffic management
|
| 6. |
Housing and Urban Affairs |
- Urban planning and management
- Construction planning and monitoring
- Incident reporting
- Prevention of encroachment and land-use alteration
|
| 7. |
Transportation: Road Transport and Highways; Railways; Ports, Shipping and Waterways |
- Surveillance
- Incident response
- Inspection and maintenance
- Project monitoring
- Disaster management
|
| 8. |
Mining |
- Monitoring and Inspection
- Automatic surveying and mapping
- Stockpile assessment and management
- Haulage road optimisation
|
| 9. |
Power |
- Real-time surveillance of assets and transmission lines
- Theft prevention and incident response
- Visual inspection and maintenance
- Construction plannlng and management
|
| 10. |
Petroleum and Natural
Gas |
- Real-time surveillance of assets and pipelines
- Theft prevention and incident response
- Visual inspection and maintenance
- Construction planning and management
|
| 11. |
Environment, Forests
and Climate Change |
- Monitoring of forests and wildlife
- Afforestation through seed-balls, irrigation and real-time monitoring
- Anti-poaching actions
- Pollution assessment and evidence-gathering
|
| 12. |
Information and Broadcasting |
- High-quality videography of events and
- difficult-to-reach-places at a fraction of the cost and approvals required
- Low altitude shooting without noise and-dust pollution and risk of accidents
- Complete replacement of costly helicopter-based videography
|
Note:
- The above list is illustrative and not exhaustive. New applications may evolve with time, usage and further innovations.
- The above list has been prepared in consultation with academia, drone startups and industry bodies.
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