CHARLOTTESVILLE — Central Virginia will play host to one of the first national conferences on the use of drones for public safety, as first responders from around the country converge in late February on Piedmont Virginia Community College in Albemarle County.

 

PVCC — which offers the state’s only workforce certificate in drone operation — will host its first National Unmanned Aerial Systems Summit from Feb. 27 to March 1. According to organizers, the list of planned attendees includes officials from Georgia, Texas, Utah, Florida and Ontario, Canada.

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Over the course of three days at Roseland Farms in Crozet, they’ll share ideas and best practices on the use of drones for public safety purposes — mostly search and rescue, but also weather imaging, damage assessment and disaster response, said Darren Goodbar, a drone instructor at PVCC. The list of topics does not include surveillance, Goodbar said.

Drones are becoming an increasingly important tool in public response to disasters. The Albemarle County Fire Rescue Division is one of many public agencies incorporating drones into their operations — most notably in the 2014 search for missing University of Virginia student Hannah Graham, who was later found murdered.

 

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Elsewhere, rescue workers have used drones to gather crucial data and map out a disaster area so relief workers could focus their efforts where they’re needed most. In Southern California, fire departments use them to monitor the speed and movement of wildfires. They were used to find victims trapped in the rubble following a 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Nepal in 2015.

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