The Gatwick Airport closures in December of last year are still a hot topic in the drone industry, especially now that estimates of the cost of the incident have been released – a whopping $65 million.
The incident – when a rogue drone apparently deliberately flew over runways in order to prevent flights from taking off – could have been prevented, or at least limited. The technologies exist to keep unauthorized drones out of airspace – they simply haven’t been implemented. Pablo Estrada, VP of Marketing at Dedrone, explains: “Using DroneTracker 4, organizations can now quickly assess when they are most vulnerable to drone incursions, and the areas that need more resources to protect assets. DroneTracker 4 puts data into action, and when airspace security tools are in place, incursions can be prevented or quickly mitigated, allowing organizations to resume normal operations and hold the drone pilot responsible for their actions.”
Dedrone, a market leader in airspace security, today announced the launch of DroneTracker 4: which detects, localizes, and tracks simultaneous drones to protect against advanced drone threats. “DroneTracker 4 software uses Dedrone’s DroneDNA database to recognize and classify RF, WiFi, and autonomous drones approximately one kilometer away from a protected site,” says a company press release.
The blog post below, reprinted with permission, explains how the system works:
The core elements of any counterdrone program are to quickly assess airspace activity, protect assets, and neutralize the threat. Before any action can be taken, airspace activity data must first be collected and analyzed. Airspace activity data is collected through detection hardware, such as RF sensors, cameras, microphones, and radar.
Some of the questions DroneTracker helps answer include:
- How many drones are in my airspace?
- What time of day, or which days, are drones appearing?
- What kinds of drones are being used?
- How long was the drone in my airspace?
Airspace security programs must be efficient, accurate and actionable in order to provide maximum protection to sensitive infrastructure and assets. Dedrone is proud to introduce DroneTracker 4, which allows users to act on insights driven by data. DroneTracker 4 provides security teams meaningful, operational data to help take action against drone threats. New additions to DroneTracker include tools to help answer the following questions:
What are the drone pilots targeting? New airspace analytics tools uncover patterns in drone activity in the airspace. Found on the reports page, the summary table displays the most important information about the timeframe analyzed.
DroneTracker 4 automatically uncovers patterns in drone activity
What areas need the most protection from drone threats? Drones provide a birds-eye view of a protected site, allowing the operator to locate vulnerabilities in security systems and exploit blind spots. DroneTracker’s new alert heatmap gives a quick, visual overview of unauthorized drone activity in a broad area, and indicates locations of interest and hot spots.
This data is then fed into DroneTracker, which can then make decisions and provide more information on what’s happening in the airspace.
What is the nature of the threat? Whether it is contraband delivery, espionage or to disrupt operations, DroneTracker 4 provides a fine-grained analysis of drone activity by drone detection sensor and type and helps illustrate the threat at a given location.
In the first chart, DroneTracker shows the most frequently flown drones by the manufacturer, whether they be consumer, commercial, or DIY. Drones have different capabilities, whether designed for distance, speed, payload or otherwise, and this data can provide additional context to the nature of the threats in the airspace.
The alerts by sensor chart how drone alerts may affect certain areas of the facility, especially when there are certain sensors with larger percentages of detections than others. This chart is particularly helpful for installations with a larger footprint, or area to protect, which may be deploying several sensors over a distributed over an area.
DroneTracker 4 provides fine-grained analytics to illustrate the nature of drone threats
How can we track the history of our drone activity? Scheduled reporting automatically updates stakeholders about airspace activity, pointing out alerts by the hour and day of the week, without requiring to log in to the software. Flight date and time data, when produced through DroneTracker, immediately makes any unusual activity or patterns visible to the user. DroneTracker users can create new security protocols to ensure proper defensive resources are available to intercept drones at the times when their property is most vulnerable.
DroneTracker 4 keeps security stakeholders automatically up-to-date through automated, scheduled reporting
DroneTracker’s brand new hour and day chart gives a quick overview to see when there are high or unusual times of activity, as well as suggesting the average or baseline amount of activity that may be normal.
Security providers can now identify clearly when there are unusual or concerning patterns on drone activity, for example, drones flying late at night or during key operational moments, such as when security staff switches their shifts.
DroneTracker 4 helps security providers quickly identify patterns of drone activity that may be unusual or align with key operational moments
Together, these updates and advancements make the Dedrone solution the most detailed and actionable counterdrone platform for security professionals to understand drone activity and protect critical assets.
DroneTracker 4 enables security providers to understand the specific nature of the airspace threat and prepare and respond accordingly. Contact our team to learn more about how to put your data into action with DroneTracker 4, here.
Miriam McNabb is the Editor-in-Chief of DRONELIFE and CEO of JobForDrones, a professional drone services marketplace, and a fascinated observer of the emerging drone industry and the regulatory environment for drones. Miriam has penned over 3,000 articles focused on the commercial drone space and is an international speaker and recognized figure in the industry. Miriam has a degree from the University of Chicago and over 20 years of experience in high tech sales and marketing for new technologies.
For drone industry consulting or writing, Email Miriam.
TWITTER:@spaldingbarker
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[…] pointed out the potential damage to the industry. Others made the obvious point that given the anti-drone technology currently available, the history of problems at airports, and the level of protection given to […]