Episode 198: Eyes in the Sky: Indiana DHS’s Innovative Drone Program with Mike White

Episode notes

What are the challenges in drone implementation?

Hello Smart Firefighting Community!

Welcome to another episode of covering real world innovations via interviews with fire service and technology industry experts that empower YOU to develop your very own Smart Firefighting strategy!

In this episode:

Understand the context into how drones enhance officer safety by providing situational awareness, recon, and overwatch capabilities

Learn the importance of choosing the right drone platform for a specific mission and review the advantages and capabilities of different drones

Find out why the future of drones in public safety includes expanding their usage for inspections, accident investigations, and law enforcement operations

Get the scoop from Mike White - CBRNE Assistant Section Chief at Indiana Department of Homeland Security and Commissioner of the Indiana Emergency Response Commission.

He delves into the innovative uses of drones for tasks ranging from mapping erosion to enhancing event security. Learn about the challenges they face, including public perception and technology considerations, and get a glimpse into the future of drones in public safety.

Head to www.smartfirefighting.com to discover how SFF accelerates innovation for emergency responders, to find out when our next event is, or review our curated resources!

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Chapters

1. 0:00 Intro
2. 0:51 Meet Mike White of Indiana Homeland Security
3. 1:36 What Indiana DHS covers
4. 3:04 How drones came into hazmat response
5. 4:54 Picking the right drone for the mission
6. 7:02 Inspecting amusement rides
7. 8:36 Licensing, COAs and Part 107
8. 11:22 Working with Darley
9. 14:02 Challenges in drone implementation
10. 18:04 State rules on drones and data
11. 21:22 A statewide standard operating procedure
12. 23:46 Mapping with Site Scan for ArcGIS
13. 26:30 Cameras and sensors
14. 28:46 Helping SWAT and law enforcement
15. 30:24 Where drones go next
16. 32:55 Drones as first responders
17. 35:38 How to start a drone team
18. 37:36 Indiana event plug
19. 38:52 Outro

Questions answered in this episode

What does the Indiana Department of Homeland Security drone program do?

Mike White says the program started in 2019 with 12 drones and has grown to 21 drones operated by four pilots. They fly missions for hazmat response, mapping for mitigation projects like erosion control on Lake Michigan, fire investigations, code enforcement inspections of amusement park rides and ski lifts, and traffic monitoring at the state fairgrounds.

Hear it at 3:04

How does Indiana DHS choose the right drone for each mission?

Mike White says you have to research the drone and look at its advantages for your specific need. The M30 is their response drone because it flies in all weather and at night. The Matrice 210s are now used mainly for mapping. Mavic Minis go inside burned buildings for fire investigations because they are small enough to fly through a window.

Hear it at 5:20

What licenses and training did the Indiana drone team complete?

Mike White says the team earned Part 107 licenses using an online program called Gold Seal, then contracted with Purdue University for three days of hands-on flying since none of them had touched a drone before. He also attended a three-day symposium in Colorado called Safecon 2019.

Hear it at 8:36

How does Indiana DHS address security concerns about Chinese-made drones?

Mike White says they use a secured AT&T FirstNet MiFi for internet connections and never connect drones to state servers. The state is developing a statewide drone standard operating procedure that covers data collection and security. He says they have a good rapport with leadership and have not been banned from buying DJI drones.

Hear it at 14:02

What mapping software does the Indiana drone team use?

They use Site Scan by ArcGIS, an Esri program. Mike White says they fly missions on an iPad with the Site Scan app, then upload photos to process in the cloud without needing a supercomputer like Pix4D requires. The software creates 2D and 3D maps and can compare flights month to month using a timeline slider.

Hear it at 23:46

Transcript

Machine transcript of the published audio. Names may be misspelled and some sections are missing.

Ep 198 transcript

Eyes in the Sky: Indiana DHS’s Innovative Drone Program with Mike White

Speakers: Kevin Sofen, Mike White

Source: Whisper medium.en machine transcription of the published Podbean audio (no original transcript found in Drive), lightly cleaned. Speakers were separated by voice clustering and then checked and assigned by hand at every speaker change. Gaps where the model returned no usable text are marked [inaudible m:ss].

[0:00] Kevin Sofen: Welcome to the Smart Firefighting Podcast, where we cover firefighting technology trends and change management. In today's episode, we have Mike White, the chief pilot and C. Burney assistant section chief at the Indiana Department of Homeland Security, where we will discuss the implementation and usage of drones and public safety operations. Mike will explain how drones were incorporated into hazmat response and used for mapping and fire investigation applications. Mike also shares some insights on choosing the right drone platform for specific missions and challenges facing drone implementation, including concerns around Chinese-made drones. Thanks for tuning in and enjoy the conversation. Sitting here alongside Mike White, the chief pilot and assistant CBRNU section chief of Indiana Department of Homeland Security. Mike, how are you doing today?

[0:51] Mike White: Good.

[0:52] Kevin Sofen: How are you? I'm doing well. So, I maybe gave it away, you're in Indiana, but where in Indiana are you located?

[0:58] Mike White: Right now, I'm downtown at the Indiana Government Center in Indianapolis. This is where my office is at, but I'm also a remote worker, so I cover roughly 28 counties in kind of the southeast to central part of Indiana.

[1:13] Kevin Sofen: Right on. Well, I know Indianapolis becomes like the fire capital of the world for at least one week of the year every year with FDIC, so I know we have become quite familiar with the city.

[1:24] Mike White: Right.

[1:26] Kevin Sofen: We'll see you there then. Great place for conferences. I wanted something to make Indianapolis this hub at some point. And I know it's really good for these kind of events.

[1:33] Mike White: Yeah, we used to be the crossroads of America, so.

[1:36] Kevin Sofen: Yeah. Also, for those of us that don't have insights into the Indiana Department of Homeland Security and sort of the maybe macro function and then some of the micro tasks that you do, I mean, if you could, I'd love to get some sort of context on what does the Indiana Department of Homeland Security do, and tell me what kind of the services and population and community that you serve. that you serve.

[1:58] Mike White: Sure. We serve the whole state of Indiana. So from the north of Chicago all the way to Cincinnati and Evansville, the whole state. But the Indiana Department of Homeland Security is made up of five groups, the Indiana State Fire Marshal's Office, EMS, Emergency Management, Building and Code Enforcement, and then the Building Commission for the state of Indiana. So that's all under Homeland Security. My office is under the state fire marshal's office, the hazmat division. We are predominantly hazmat specialists, but when the state decided to, or DHS decided to do drone work, we decided to put it under the hazmat section. And hazmat specialists are the pilots and we predominantly do all of the flying for Homeland Security.

[2:47] Kevin Sofen: So you mentioned hazmat and sort of the scope of serving the greater Indiana population. Where and how did drones come into the picture and what did drones mean to and how are drones being used by the Indiana Department of Homeland Security?

[3:04] Mike White: Right. Well, drones were kind of incorporated into hazmat response. So for recon and that kind of thing, and that's kind of where the hazmat section, you know, We kind of pushed for drones 2017, 2018, a lot of departments were starting to get drones. So we started researching it and working on it and our program started in 2019. We purchased our first 12 drones and since then we've expanded to, I believe right now we're at 21 drones and I have four pilots with 21 drones. So each of us carry roughly four to five drones on our trucks. We've got everything from the Mavic Minis to the 2-10s, Matrice 2-10s, and we just recently purchased the M-30s. So our 2-10s now are predominantly our mapping drones. We do a lot of mapping for our mitigation department under Homeland Security. Erosion control, we've flown a lot of projects up on Lake Michigan with mapping erosion along the beaches. We did that project up there. We flew for roughly two and a half years every month. So, we fly fire investigations with our fire investigators. We fly and we map fires and fire investigations. Last year, I believe I spent six days out at the Walmart fire and plane field, mapping for our investigators and also for the ATF. So we really do a lot with them. We probably, if I had to total it up, we fly probably 10 to 12 hours a month. So a lot of different projects.

[4:54] Kevin Sofen: Thanks for that context. And it's interesting to hear you have these different platforms using for different purposes. I'd love to dive into that a bit more. You mentioned Mavic Minis, Matrice 210s, M30s, and you mentioned the Matrice for mapping, but from someone that maybe doesn't know drones or just kind of an aspiring drone enthusiast, how do you go about finding, thinking about the right drone platform for the right mission?

[5:20] Mike White: You kind of got to research the drone and look at some of the advantages of the drones, you know, like the M30. The M30 is a good mapping drone. It's probably not the premier mapping drone out there, but it does have that. Again, like I said, our M30s are, we call them our response drones. People are familiar with the M30. It's all weather. It's, you know, it can fly in the rain. It can fly at night. We bought the spotlights with it. So we call that our response drone. Then, you know, like I said, our 210s, we probably use them for mapping now that we got the 30s. They were our main response drone. We had the Mavic 2 Duals, which we've kind of semi-retired them since we got the 30s. We're looking at expanding our code enforcement division, does amusement park ride inspections. So, we're looking at expanding with our code enforcement and our amusement park inspectors to deploy them with the Mavic Duels to do inspections on, especially like Ferris wheels and roller coasters and that kind of thing. They have to inspect the ski lifts every November before the season starts. So we're looking at incorporating the drones into looking at the ski lift towers and the cables and stuff like that. So we've just, it seems like every week we find a new purpose for the drones, so.

[6:53] Kevin Sofen: Well, it's good. I'm glad you're expecting those roller coasters because to be honest, some of those terrify me because I may be a little worried on the safety. So I'm glad to know that there's an active safety checks going on.

[7:02] Mike White: Well, if anybody watches social media, I believe it was this spring, there was a roller coaster and I think it was South Carolina or North Carolina that had a broken weld and the public found it before the park found it. So that's one thing that just kind of popped up on our radar is, as you know, I can't tell you how many, I know we have 92 county fairs in Indiana every year. We have an Indiana State Fair, and just numerous other, you know, events that have carnivals. We've got two amusement parks in Indiana. We got Holiday World down south, and Indiana Beach up around Monticello. So they have permanent roller coasters and stuff. And we've talked about incorporating the drones into kind of flying the tracks and looking at the whole structure of the roller coaster and that kind of thing.

[7:54] Kevin Sofen: There's just stuff going on, and it's important to have your involvement to kind of help with understanding what's going on and safety checks and all kind of benefiting the public. And I always want to go back a step or two. You had mentioned how the drone usually sort of started with the becoming intertwined with all things hazmat. But that process of like it getting integrated within hazmat operations, and now even this process you mentioned you have four licensed pilots. Talk me through sort of the process of like, so you didn't have drones, and then all of a sudden you kind of crawl walking and now for the most part running into drone operations from like a regulation standpoint, a licensing standpoint, things like that.

[8:36] Mike White: Right. Well, when we started, we came up with a plan to license, you know, the difference between a CO and a Part 107. We decided to go with the Part 107s. We used a program online called Gold Seal. I'll give a shout out to them. They have a very good program. You have to pay for it, but it is a very good online learning program for the Part 107. So we completed our Part 107s. We actually contracted with Purdue University to go and get hands-on flying for three days at Purdue. So we kind of contracted with their aviation department, went up and spent three days with them, you know, getting hands-on with drones since really none of us had ever, you know, really touched a drone. So we went to Purdue, did our three days up there, got our hands on. And then I went out to an event in Colorado called Safecon 2019, a company out of Atlanta, Skyfire, partnered with Surtsey Security and Emergency Response Center out in Colorado. And they had a three-day symposium on drones and public safety. So I went out there and learned a lot. And then, you know, we came back, we decided what we were going to get, our initial purchase was four Matrice 210s, four Mavic Duals, and we added onto that four Mavic Duals. Mavic Minis, the original Mavic Mini ones, to be our kind of our training drones to go out every day to kind of fly around on. And then our duals and our 210s were kind of our workhorses. Like I was telling you before, we were getting quotes on it, and I went to FDIC, which you mentioned there at the beginning, and I'd met him before, but Mike Massarino was a salesman for Darley. I met Mike and told him what we were doing, and he actually had on the table the 210, the Mavic Dual, and everything we were looking for, and Mike says, well, hey, I can give you a quote too, and I can give you a better deal, and the rest is history, and you know, Darley's been our drone supplier since 2019, and like I said, I think we've purchased 21 drones through Darley, and right now we're looking at FEMA grant for, it's a drone called the Freefly Astro. It's a company out of, I think it's Woodville, Washington sells it's a predominantly a mapping drone and we're actually going through Darley to purchase for them. Hopefully we hear something in the next month or so about the grant and it's been very promising. FEMA is very excited about it. So I think we're going to get four Freefly Astros and we're going to do a lot more mapping.

[11:22] Kevin Sofen: I'd love to hear it. The legend of Mike Massarino lives on. Shout out, Mike, a close dear friend of mine. He's a great human. And I appreciate you saying those things about Darley. I mean, just maybe throw Darley a plug, too. I mean, what's been your experience working with Darley throughout buying, servicing, implementing, things like that?

[11:41] Mike White: It's been great when Mike left, Nick face stepped up as the lead sales guy for the robotics section. And, you know, Nick's kind of been the go-to guys for the last couple of years since Mike left. Sean is on the maintenance side. you know, I tell people all the time, you know, anytime I pick up the phone and dial the number, you know, Sean or Nick answers and, you know, sometimes I can work the problems out on my own, or sometimes I call Sean and we kind of work we kind of work it out. You know, they've been very well, they've got probably, I would say the best customer service in the business, but I'm kind of partial to them. So, but no, anytime we need anything, you know, I pick up the phone and Nick or Shawn's available and they take care of us. So, and even outside of drones, I mean, I needed rechargeable lithium batteries for an instrument I had and the company wasn't listed as an Indiana dealer So I called Nick and I said, Hey, could you purchase these and sell them to us? And he said, sure. So they became a lithium battery provider for us too.

[12:49] Kevin Sofen: Good to know. I mean, at Darley with the equipment side offers a wide range of solutions. So I'm, I'm glad to hear that. And Nick is Johnny on the spot. And I too, do sometimes find myself in a jam and we'll call Sean and Sean often bails me out from some sort of technical standpoint.

[13:05] Mike White: Yeah. If Sean can't figure it out, he'll call, he knows somebody in DJI that can't figure it out, so.

[13:11] Kevin Sofen: Sean knows the guy. He'll take care of it.

[13:13] Mike White: Yep. Sean's the man.

[13:14] Kevin Sofen: Well said. I really appreciate you saying all those nice words. There's some great humans that are leading the Darley internal sales side, so it's awesome to hear that. So to kind of try and bring a little bit more color to some of the drone usage, I think sometimes people, they see drones and they think there's a lot of the commercial, kind of the consumer side. there's also the concerns of privacy. But I would love to hear even a little bit more on, I want to go two directions, but one will start, I want to hear about roadblocks and challenges, and then I want to hear also where else you see this going. But with roadblocks and challenges, you mentioned COA versus Part 107, or even overcoming community resistance. What are some challenges and roadblocks that you face with implementing drone usage within your operations?

[14:02] Mike White: Well, some of the challenges we've faced, again, we had a COA. I didn't renew it, but I went ahead and got a COA. One of the big issues right now, of course, is the big elephant in the room is the Chinese drones. We're constantly facing that challenge. I am a big fan of DJI. If it's not DJI, I would probably say the next best would be Autel. So that's some of the challenges we face is working with state legislators, working with internal partners about the security aspect of the drones. We run our drones, we use a secured AT&T FirstNet Mifi to fly our drones with when they need an internet service. We don't ever connect them to a state server or anything to alleviate that issue there. never really had issues with public. Like I said, we started flying our projects up on the lake in February of 2020. And if everybody remembers, in March of 2020, COVID hit. So we took two months off. We started flying again in May. And a lot of people come out and ask us, during COVID, here's four guys up on Lake Michigan flying drones. And they're like, hey, what are you guys doing? So once we explained to them what we were doing, everybody was like, hey, cool. And we've never really ran into a lot of resistance with the public. A lot of people will come up to you and ask you what you're doing. We'll explain to them what we're doing and they'll stand there and watch. We'll show them the video feeds or the pictures and kind of a public relation thing, explain to them what the drones do, what the drones don't do. And we've always had positive interactions when it comes to our drones. One of the other things, like I was saying, is we do a lot of drone work for our Indiana State Fairgrounds. We fly during the fair, we fly traffic and parking for the fair, and then we fly a lot of concerts. They had a lot of issues with break-ins in the parking lots during concerts in the evenings. So they talked to us and we started flying the parking lots during concerts. So we get there early, everybody coming in to park sees the drones fly in the parking lot and knows that they're being watched, and I'm proud to say since we started flying they've had zero break-ins in their parking lots. So on the public aspect of that, a lot of people see the drones flying over the parking lot and I think they feel more secure that, hey, somebody's watching the parking lot, we can come back to our car and everything's going to be there. So, you know, like I said, we've had a lot of positive interactions with the public, with the drones. So knock on wood, it keeps going that way. But I think it's the way we kind of present them to, you know, we don't try to hide anything. We're very open. We'll show them, you know, what it does and, you know, we'll land them and let them pick them up, touch them.

[17:13] Kevin Sofen: So. Great to hear about the community involvement, I think just being everything on the table and talking about who, what, when, where, why and what it's doing. example of how to just get that community engagement. But I have heard a lot about this, the Chinese-made drones, the blue SUAS, and like the kind of both sides of the fence. And I myself, I'm sitting here and I'm holding an iPhone. And I know these are kind of designed in California, made in China. And I don't want to open this Pandora's box or, you know, ask you to say anything that you don't want to say, but like, I don't know where it's going from here because I know there's a lot of drone users that like those particular platforms but are being funneled into saying you must buy these other platforms. What do you think's next? And are you just kind of taking it one day at a time, or how are you approaching this balance right now?

[18:04] Mike White: I think as far as the state of Indiana goes is we have a good rapport with the Homeland Security Director who has a very good rapport with the governor. And again, the subject comes up every couple of months, and we kind of assure them that We're not flying critical infrastructure, we're not flying anything that is going to be something that shares any secrets. One of the things that the state of Indiana is also doing is we've got a working group established right now to develop a statewide SOP for drone use that does include the security aspect. It's made up of a lot of the major players in the drone business, all the agencies that fly drones, and also our Indiana Office of Technology. So you know, we are working on having an SOP for the state, what we can do, what we can't do. Again, you know, having the secure MiFis that the drones can hook up to, not hooking the drones up to state internet infrastructure or anything. So you know, that's a good thing there. I know I've talked to guys in some states that have outlawed the ZGI drones, and they've kind of said that the states have taken a step back and kind of regretted what they've done. I know Florida is doing a buyback program, and I think the University of Central Florida is going to be doing some internal studies on some of the drones that the state buys back to actually do some studies to see what kind of information they are collecting. But as far as the state of Indiana right now, we're pretty secure. We do have rules and the state Senate passed a bill last year about, it's not really about drones, but it's about Chinese products and stuff and collecting it. information. So we have to follow them rules. Again, it pretty much is predominantly don't hook up to state systems. So well, so other than that, I think we're pretty, we feel pretty secure about what we're doing.

[20:11] Kevin Sofen: That's good. And I'm glad to hear that. And that's something where we want to make sure that you continue to have the tools you need to be successful and do it all in a transparent manner. And so I appreciate you leading the charge and showing that it can be done.

[20:24] Mike White: Right. And again, you know, each state has their own thing. The federal government has rules. That's kind of why we're going with the Freefly Astro for our mapping drone because we are using FEMA funding for that. We're getting a FEMA grant for that. So they had certain rules. Again, everything I read about the drone, it's a good drone, but it just, in comparison to the M300, it's just night and day. So we would much prefer to have an M300, but unfortunately, the federal government don't let us spend federal funds on the Chinese drones.

[21:01] Kevin Sofen: So yeah. Well, working within the constraints, that makes sense. And just a couple, a minute or two ago, you mentioned the statewide SOP that either you're developing. Could you expand upon what you mean by, in your eyes, what is a drone SOP and how will that be sort of developed and spread throughout the state?

[21:22] Mike White: It's just gonna be a standing operating procedure for anybody in state agencies that use drones. Kinda like, they're not going to require a Part 107, they're going to highly, you know, urge you to get a Part 107. You know, I know our state police fly with a COA, but you know, the Part 107 kind of really covers you through the FAA and regulation wise, you know, with that Part 107. Talking about state properties, you know, flying over state properties, flying around state parks, you know, we've talked about, you know, the information technology, how to, you know, not hook up to state agencies or state internet. They haven't really talked about what you can buy and can't buy. You know, that's kind of under a different state agency, which, you know, there were rumors going around that the state was not going to allow us to buy Chinese drones, which I just bought three M30s three months ago. So we're still buying the DJI products, which again, you just can't beat them. But, you know, it's just kind of, they've taken each agency's SOPs and kind of combined them into one, kind of talking about, you know, data collection and securing videos, pictures, how we secure that stuff. You know, so if there's ever a FOIA, a FOIA request, which is a request for the public to want to view something, we have a repository where we can put that stuff. I know when we were flying the lake, a lot of people up there were asking, you know, where they could get copies of our pictures and our maps and stuff like that, and we referred them to the governor's office because that's who we were actually doing the project for.

[23:11] Kevin Sofen: So, good context there. And as you were, it's good to hear about, hey, these are just some of the frameworks and the rules to follow, and we want to encourage that we have a good framework for a set of rules so everyone feels good about it. One thing you mentioned was sort of the photos and the videos and the data that's collected from these drones. I mean, whether it's having a thermal camera or a regular camera or some type of sensor, there's a lot of data being captured in stream. Tell me about, I'd love to hear some of the softwares that you're using. You mentioned mapping or maybe even some streaming. What kind of softwares are you using to help enhance your different operations?

[23:46] Mike White: Right. For mapping, we use an Esri program called Site Scan by ArcGIS. It's an Esri program. It's a flight control program, and also you process your photos. So we fly off an iPad with the Site Scan. We fly off of our iPads with the Site Scan app, and then we download it to an SD card, and then we can process it through the Site Scan software on a computer, Basically, we upload the photos from the SD card and then through the site scan program, we process it through the cloud, which unlike Pix4D, we're not required to have a huge supercomputer to do the processing. All of our processing is done in the cloud. It's a very secure network. It's an Esri program, so everything is secure. And then once it's processed, we have it on our desktops and we can view the finished product. 2D maps, we can do 3D mapping, we can do, it's called timeline, where I can put last month's flight and this month's flight and we can do a timeline slider and kind of look at the differences, which is a lot of stuff we did up with the erosion. We would go month to month and look and see how much beach was coming back, how much beach was going away, that kind of stuff. As far as the video live feed, we currently use Microsoft Teams with a 4K capture card. I know if Mike Massarino listens to this, he's going to, you know, you know, same thing kind of Drone Sense will do, but it's almost cheap and free. So you know, we've had Drone Sense, we've used it. Right now, we just don't have the money to pay for Drone Sense. It's a yearly subscription. So we do the free thing through Teams. We can also live stream through Zoom using the 4K capture card, that kind of stuff. And then for just retaining the video and pictures, we save them either on an external hard drive or we can put them on our share drive on the state system.

[25:56] Kevin Sofen: I mean, you got to be crafty and find different ways to do what you need to do and ideally accomplish your job without sometimes paying as needed. So that's good to hear how you're getting crafty with things like that. I know Drone Sense is a great platform that helps, especially if you're flying multiple drones and wanting to have level of interoperability. So that's, and then to talk about mapping, talk about streaming, any other, like any particular camera payloads or sensors that you're using that even if you want to talk, touch on infrared and how you're kind of using that or any examples there?

[26:30] Mike White: Well, we, like for the mapping with the 210, I use an X5S, it's an autofocus camera, which again, initially when we bought our 210s, we bought the Z30 and then the X-T2 thermal camera. So I was able to talk to Nick and get something that I could use also for mapping. So we got the X5S for mapping, and then our other drones, like the DM30, basically it's got the wide, the zoom and the thermal. And then the Mavic 3, again, it's kind of the same thing. It's got the zoom and the wide angle and the thermal. Some of the thermal stuff we do, again, hazmat response, fire response, looking at hot spots on a fire, that kind of stuff. use it for that. And then like the minis, the Mavic minis, we use them for interior fire investigations. Say you've got a two-story house that burnt, they want to look at the second floor, we can take that Mavic mini, fly it in a window on the second floor, get in there and do a 360 with pictures or with videos. So that's something we can do there.

[27:48] Kevin Sofen: Just fascinating to think about how the drone is a delivery mechanism for these cameras and sensors. And then we have different softwares that allow us to take that data that's being created to accomplish different safety initiatives or different tasks to allow us to do our jobs better. And kind of on that point is I wanted to maybe have a conversation the other week with the police department in the Humboldt Police Department in Texas, Chief Ken Goudery. But he talked a lot about law enforcement perspective and the police and looking at drones as a solution that helps with officer safety in terms of not putting people in harm's way when you can prevent it and being able to get perspectives. How would you describe some of the benefits about how drones and robots can be used from a safety perspective to you put a drone in harm's way as opposed to putting a human in harm's way?

[28:46] Mike White: Right. We don't do a lot of law enforcement stuff, but I do work with INPD and Fort Wayne PD. And yes, a lot of the SWAT teams using the drones, you know, send the drone in first to get, you know, recon or again, locate the subject they're looking for. And you know, it came up once that said, you know, well, what if they shoot the drone? Well, you know, like most police officers will say, well, I'd rather shoot the $500 than the first guy in the stack that's making entry. So yes, they are very beneficial there. I know INPD, they've expanded their program to include minis with the SWAT team, and then their patrol officers are all flying, I believe it's Mavic 3Ts thermals. So they're using them for Overwatch, Pursuits, that kind of stuff. So yes, they're using drones in a lot of different ways there.

[29:47] Kevin Sofen: Well, with a lot of different drone use cases and applications that we just covered there, and you've talked about from fares to erosion control and. some of the challenges that you faced. And I'd love, if possible, to hear you give a little context on sort of what next. You know, we don't need to get too much more into the BlueSUSAS conversation, but like, where do you see drones as a, where are drones going next? And how are you, how do you see drones continuing to enhance the operations conducted by your teams?

[30:24] Mike White: Well, I see drones as, like we talked about, expanding to inspecting the amusement rides, doing a lot of building inspections, that kind of stuff. With the grant, we're getting from FEMA to map mitigation projects, where if they have a major flood and FEMA has to buy properties, they've got to monitor them properties. I believe it's for seven years, to make sure, you know, nothing's built on them. That's one of the projects we're going to start using drones for, is to use the drones to map the projects, the properties, and then we can track it, you know, through site scan. We can do a map of it, and you can do, you know, you can look at it from year to year and make sure nothing's going on there. As law enforcement, I.M.P.D. got rid of all their helicopters and their exclusively unmanned aerial systems, I see a lot of police departments doing that because it's cheaper to buy drones than it is to maintain a helicopter. So I see a lot of that going and then accident investigations. It's quicker to map that accident scene and you get the road open quicker than it is to take pictures and do measurements. So with the software now, we can do measurements with the mapping. It's all documented, it's all saved as evidence, and it's quicker, it's easier, and it gets the road open and you have less backup. One thing we've learned in the highways is with backups, we have more accidents. So we get that going. So that's kind of where I see it going.

[32:11] Kevin Sofen: I mean, it's exciting any way that we can put a human out of harm's way, but also find different costs and efficiency gains. Seems to be a wide roadmap of different things for drone integration. So appreciate you being on the cutting edge and sharing some best practices on that. And I'm sort of curious to kind of maybe sort of final two questions or so here. I mean, one is, you kind of answered this in the last question, but like anything in particular that you really got your eye on or that you're really tracking or excited about in terms of something that's on the cutting edge and something to do with drones or robots that really is catching your attention?

[32:55] Mike White: It's not going to really affect us, but I know the law enforcement community is drones as first responders, using, you know, beyond line of sight, being able to dispatch a drone to a scene of a crime or something, the drone can get there, you know, within two or three minutes where it might take an officer five to ten minutes to get there. So that's some really, that's some cutting edge, cutting edge stuff there. The mapping, you know, the software is getting, you know, with the RTKs and stuff like that, we can, we can get within a centimeter on mapping. I know we've We've used it in damage assessment for tornadoes and floods, where we can map it and then we can, through the software, we can figure volume of trees or volume of damage or volume of rocks that have been moved in a flood and that kind of stuff. So there's just a lot of – it's making everything faster. you would have to have a person go out and walk and measure and take pictures where now we can fly over it without even having to get into it and download the pictures, process it, and we've got a 3D map that is just like being there. So that's kind of where I see it going with us. And then, like I said on the hazmat side, we don't have to put a guy in a suit to walk down to see what's leaking. We can fly a drone down with the zoom cameras and the thermal imaging, and we have a better idea of what's going on before we even send people downrange to get into the bad stuff. And then we also have the ability to be Overwatch, situational awareness, have the drone over a team that's downrange and watching over them to see if there's some kind of hazard that they don't see that we can see with a drone that we can relay to them. So there's, it's just, again, it's kind of the eye in the sky, you know, it's, it's a flying camera.

[35:01] Kevin Sofen: So endless opportunities and just ways to find efficiency gains, safety gains, and in a public benefit through efficiency from whether it's DHS or law enforcement or fire in different ways. So again, just exciting to think about this integration of tech within public safety. So kudos on you, and if I could ask of a final mic drop from Mike today, I mean, it could be a quote, a question, a challenge. You've given a lot of wisdom bombs here today, which I appreciate. Anything else that you maybe could leave with someone about this conversation here?

[35:38] Mike White: I have a lot of people reach out to us and ask how to start a drone team, you know, what do they need to do? My big thing is, before you pick a drone, know what you want to do you need a drone for mapping? Do you need a drone for response? And then kind of research the drones. Reach out to other teams or other drone pilots. Social media is huge. There's lots of sites on social media through Facebook or Twitter or Instagram that we kind of get together and talk about ideas and kind of, you know, regulations, what's going on in Florida. I don't know what's going on in Florida, but I can see on social media what they're doing and some of the stuff they're doing down there. So you know, I would say, you know, stay informed, get on social media, look at information, and you know, get your Part 107. We used to say, you know, if a fireman can do it, anybody can do it. So get online, do your course, get your part 107, and then especially these smaller departments or teams that want to do something, sometimes we run into them, we go to a scene and we've got a drone flying around and we're like, whose drone is this? And it might be somebody that goes, oh yeah, we bought one at Walmart, we're flying it. So we got to fill them in on the regulations and what they can do and can't do and shouldn't do and you know just kind of educate them so again part 107 you know what you want before you buy a drone a lot of people will buy a drone and try to make it fit into what they want but you know look at what you want to do before you pick out your drone

[37:21] Kevin Sofen: couldn't agree more do your homework talk with some friends talk with look up do some research on social media and talk to guys like mike white that are that are leading the charge i mean yeah i appreciate you sharing all these insights because they're, they're really helpful for.

[37:36] Mike White: And then, one more plug, if I can throw in, January 17th through the 19th at the Indiana State Fairgrounds, every year we have, this will be our third annual it's, we have, it's called the Indiana UAS skills camp where, we have 66,000 square feet of indoor flying area that, we have some classes and basically it's a good networking opportunity. And, a lot of the teams in Indiana show up and we've had people from Kentucky show up, Illinois show up, so it's not just limited to Indiana and, Darley is usually our corporate sponsor for it, you know, by all of our flying for the state fairgrounds, we get the building for free and all we really got to pay for is janitorial. So Darley comes in as our corporate sponsor and picks that up. So, you know, mark your calendars, January 17th through the 19th. It's warm, it's dry, and it's in the middle of January, which we don't get a lot of opportunity to fly. So.

[38:38] Kevin Sofen: Love to hear it. We'll put it on the calendar. I'll make sure to include the link in the show notes. And Mike, just on behalf of Darley and Smart Firefighting and just the public safety community, thanks for what you're doing on Leading the Charge here and keep going.

[38:50] Mike White: All righty. Well, thanks for having me.

[38:52] Kevin Sofen: For sure. Until next time. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to the Smart Firefighting podcast today. If you enjoyed what you heard and got any value, please drop us a rating, leave us a comment or reach out to us on social media. Have a great day and together we can advance the future of smart firefighting.