Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation IOSB 
Inital situation
Situation reconnaissance and risk assessment is the first measure in any operation by the fire department, police and rescue services. Drones are ideal for larger and complex situations. They are now an established operational tool for many authorities and organizations with security tasks (BOS). In addition to situation reconnaissance and updating, drones are also suitable for various other deployment scenarios: Monitoring critical infrastructure (e.g. dykes), detecting changes in the spread of fires or the spread of liquids on bodies of water, searching for pockets of embers, searching for people, searching for animals and documenting operations.
Problem definition
Images and videos from drones are examined by image analysts, then the information is processed and passed on to the incident commander. Both the image analysts and the incident commanders have to process a lot of information in a very short time, which creates a bottleneck during operations. Unfortunately, the potential of automated, process-supported live evaluation of the video stream and the associated metadata (such as camera position and orientation) is currently hardly utilized, so that the use of the drone is often reduced to simply viewing the video image, i.e. the drone is used as a camera hanging in the air. The fact that the information often has to be passed on to the incident command by radio adds to the challenge of accurately describing the situation.
Project team
At Fraunhofer IOSB and Fraunhofer FKIE, we have been researching various methods for automated sensor data evaluation, information processing and presentation for many years. Our expertise covers methods for image and video evaluation and sensor data fusion, position display and guidance systems as well as HMI and cloud-based data processing. The cooperation of several research groups from both institutes as part of the DRUM project created a synergy that enabled us to develop a solution to the above-mentioned problems.
