How can “flying” urban governance be smarter and more efficient?

On November 18, Sun Weiguo, director of the General Aviation Business Department and the UAV Working Committee of the China Air Transport Association, revealed at the 2024 International Electric Aviation (Kunshan) Forum that the Central Air Traffic Control Committee will soon carry out eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft) pilot projects in six cities, which will help the government accelerate the "take-off" of the low-altitude economy and provide broad space for the optimization of airspace management. The six pilot cities are initially determined to be Hefei, Hangzhou, Shenzhen, Suzhou, Chengdu, and Chongqing.

At the same time, in the vision of smart cities, drones are turning our imagination into reality.

A drone is conducting an aerial inspection. Photo provided by the interviewee

In the Gudang area, which covers an area of ​​about 4.6 square kilometers, it used to take one to two days for members of the Gudang Squadron of the Xihu District Comprehensive Administrative Law Enforcement Bureau to conduct a full inspection of the area before typhoons and other severe weather. However, using drones for patrols only takes about two hours to basically achieve full coverage of the area.

In July this year, during the Typhoon "Gemei" warning period, the Gudang Squadron used drone inspections to quickly identify two rusted and damaged advertising signs and immediately notified the responsible parties to make rectifications, effectively making up for the shortcomings of traditional manual inspections with low efficiency and blind spots, and helping to eliminate hidden dangers in a timely manner.

In the second half of 2022, under the unified arrangement of the Xihu District Comprehensive Administrative Law Enforcement Bureau, Yu Hongbo, the squadron leader of the Gudang Squadron, and his team members obtained the drone operator certificate after a week of training. In addition, each squadron is equipped with a drone for aerial patrols.

"For example, some illegal buildings are on the rooftops. Our regular human inspections may not cover everything or the owners may not be able to enter. However, drones can monitor the situation in the area in real time. Drones can quickly reach places that we cannot reach on foot, and evidence collection is more efficient and can accurately locate the location."

Yu Hongbo introduced that the law enforcement team will deal with the problems found during the drone inspection on site. This air-ground linkage mode can save the manpower and material costs of law enforcement. In addition, the drone also has the function of shouting, assisted by AI to intelligently identify illegal behaviors in the monitoring screen. If the parties are at the scene, the law enforcement team can shout remotely to remind the parties to correct the illegal behavior, realizing "contactless law enforcement."

Drones are helping urban governance “fly” to the cloud.

At present, urban governance still involves a lot of work that is complex, dangerous, and repetitive. In Luohu District, Shenzhen, unmanned drones are being used around the clock at ports. For example, they can shorten the three-hour inspection to 15 minutes and cover areas that were originally inaccessible on foot.

Compared with manually operated drones, the all-weather unattended mode has the advantages of better resource scheduling, higher emergency efficiency, and all-weather operation. While freeing up manpower and improving efficiency, it can also achieve regular multiple patrols, video intelligent comparison and dynamic monitoring, special scene emergency inspections, etc. Similar application scenarios include rivers, slopes, construction sites, illegal buildings, night inspections, etc.

By connecting previously loose areas, drones spread a smart network in the low sky over the city.

In recent years, under the situation of smart empowerment, relying on the Hangzhou Municipal Comprehensive Administrative Law Enforcement Bureau, the Xihu District Comprehensive Administrative Law Enforcement Bureau has tried to build an "air-ground" integrated drone management system, and further incorporated the existing drones in the urban management field of each district into the digital supervision platform. During the inspection, the current position, flight path, flight altitude and other relevant data of the equipment can be reflected in real time on the large screen, which is convenient for efficient scheduling during the execution of drone tasks. Since the system was launched, the work efficiency of drones has increased by nearly 8 times compared with manual inspections.

Yu Hongbo said that in the future, the Gudang Squadron also plans to promote the construction of a "drone airport" system. After planning the route, the drone can automatically take off, patrol the target area and return automatically, "and can conduct specific patrols on some specific points that are prone to safety hazards."

Behind the “flying” urban governance is the ever-increasing level of intelligent, refined and modern urban governance.

With the rapid popularization of civilian drones, "illegal flying" and other phenomena also occur from time to time, that is, some flights without a private pilot's license or without a legal identity, that is, unregistered flights. In Yuecheng District, Shaoxing, the low-altitude safety management service platform monitors the flight trajectory, base station location, early warning and control information of drones in real time. Once suspected of "illegal flying", the platform will alarm, and the relevant departments can quickly lock the real-time location and notify road patrol and others to deal with it.

At present, there is still a gray area in the use of drones in law enforcement. Yu Hongbo admitted that there is a certain time difference between the drone taking pictures and collecting evidence and the team members arriving at the scene to enforce the law and issue tickets. "For dynamic issues such as out-of-store operations or illegal parking, there may be some controversy." He said that in the future, the Gudang Squadron will arrange more team members to participate in training so that more young team members have the skills to operate drones.