Ecological Effects of Drones

The author has been involved with drone technologies since 2005. However, it is only in the last ten years or so that the drone business has been able to develop into a viable business sector in Germany and Europe, thanks to changes in the legal framework and political support. As managing partner of a drone company, the author developed the necessary technical, economic, and ecological concepts for the application for approval of regular flight operations in the field of medical logistics between 2019 and 2023. The documents submitted in the application for approval served as the basis for the operating certificate granted by the aviation authority in 2023. This approval was granted for regular flight operations in the higher risk class SAIL III and was the first operating license in Europe to include drone flights over populated areas. The advantages of using unmanned aerial vehicles in medical logistics are obvious: keywords such as speed advantage, environmentally friendly logistics, and cost reduction are often cited as arguments. Even if there is still a big question mark behind the keyword “cost reduction” at present, the use of drones can at least make logistics in the healthcare sector much more flexible. One of the questions in the application process concerned the environmental compatibility of drone flights. Extensive literature research and the evaluation of research results showed that there are still no sufficiently practical results available on this topic. For this reason, this publication summarizes the research, investigations, and tests carried out as part of the approval process. A systematic approach is used that examines the environmental impact of drone flights in a much more complex way than previous studies. Instead of looking solely at CO2 reduction compared to transporting medical supplies by road, a holistic and, above all, practical approach is taken. In order to demonstrate the low impact of drone flights on wildlife, over 600 drone flights were evaluated and the reactions of animals were recorded.

The main contents of the book are:

• an examination of the fundamentals of environmental protection and a presentation of a selection of relevant data sets and sources of information.
• a structured presentation of different designs of unmanned aerial vehicles
• an analysis of current developments in the field of drones and the energy sources used for their propulsion
• a presentation of the challenges associated with the transport of hazardous substances in drone-based logistics
• an investigation of the impact of drone flights on wildlife and proposals for the implementation of environmentally friendly flight planning.