Experts gather in Amsterdam to promote use of drones

Cities, aviation authorities and large companies will gather in the RAI Amsterdam from Tuesday for a three-day conference on drones to discuss how drones can become better integrated into urban transport. Over 250 industry experts will gather at the event, called Amsterdam Drone Week.

Representatives of various cities and regions, including Amsterdam, Enschede, Stockholm, Madrid and Bavaria, will exchange ideas in the RAI for greater unity in the regulation of unmanned aviation in the city. The conference is organized by the European aviation authority EASA.

Zipline, an American start-up that is developing systems to help drones deliver medicine to difficult-to-reach areas in Ghana and Rwanda, will make an appearance. A drone for medical transport will also be on display. PostNL, KPN, the ANWB and Erasmus MC, among others, worked on this unmanned aircraft together with the Amsterdam developer of drones Avy. In the autumn of 2021, the Zwolle hospital Isala conducted test flights for the transport of blood for transfusions.

The number of unmanned aircraft in the Netherlands has doubled in the past seven years. A few years ago there were high expectations around drones, but now that the hype is over, they are increasingly being used by companies and organizations, according to Amsterdam Drone Week.

For example, there is a market with a converted value of almost 2.7 billion euros for the use of drones in construction, according to the event. Drones are already being used, for example, for making 3D images of construction sites or for monitoring construction equipment.

The energy sector also makes use of drones to map out new areas to extract oil and gas, among other things. In the transport sector, rail carriers and port companies already often use unmanned aircraft to inspect infrastructure.

However, the fragmented or missing regulations for the use of drones in populated areas are often still a problem. There is not yet a uniform system of labels in Europe showing to which class a certain drone belongs. Such a label is necessary to know for each type of aircraft what is and is not allowed, such as flying near buildings or people, according to Amsterdam Drone Week.