UAViators (pronounced You-Aviators)
"Humanitarian organizations should engage in initiatives like the Humanitarian UAV Network."
- United Nations (OCHA) Policy Brief
Our Mission: to promote the safe, coordinated and effective use of UAVs for data collection, payload delivery and communication services in a wide range of humanitarian and development settings. We do this by developing and championing international guidelines for the responsible use of UAVs. We actively promote operational safety and document lessons learned and best practices. We never self-deploy. We only mobilize at the request of established humanitarian & development partners. We actively promote community engagement and educate UAV operators. We convene Experts Meetings and facilitate information sharing, coordination and learning across all our efforts. Our pilot roster includes 400+ UAV pilots. And our partnership with Air-Vid gives us access to an additional 600+ vetted pilots in 60+ countries.
Our objectives are thus five-fold: establish clear standards for the responsible use of UAVs and provide up-to-date regulatory information; document lessons learned and best practices; provide hands-on UAV training; inform UAV deployments; and catalyze research & information sharing. To pursue these objectives, we co-organized the first ever Humanitarian UAV Experts Meeting at the UN Secretariat and held this meeting again in 2015. We are also teaching the first ever UAV training courses in Europe, the US and Nepal for humanitarian and development professionals. In addition, we recently convened a high-level policy forum supported by the Rockefeller Foundation to further develop our international guidelines
To get started:
- Please sign up (the private site has member-only features).
- Complete your profile and Start Here to make the most of your membership.
- Join ongoing conversations by adding yourself to the Email-List.
- Post insights, questions and announcements to the Forum.
- Read, improve and share our Code of Conduct and Best Practices Guide.
- If you're a pilot, please join the Rapid Response Roster here.
New! Founder Patrick Meier's new book, Digital Humanitarians, has already been endorsed by Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Oxford, United Nations, Red Cross, Work Bank and more. The book features members of UAViators in action. UAViators was originally launched at QCRI.