HUREX - Experiment of Use and Prioritization of UAS in Hurricane Disaster Response

Requests for the use of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) in Hurricane Disaster Response are currently submitted to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) without prioritization or feedback on the status of the UAS mission. The MITRE Corporation conducted an experiment using real-world operators to explore cross-agency issues in an environment that enabled quantification of multi-agency mission effectiveness. This hurricane experiment (HUREX) explored the cross-agency roles of those involved in the prioritization and use of UAS for infrastructure surveillance, storm science, and other tasks. Three vignettes were used to test the interactions as they are understood today and to introduce two new concepts: the notion of a central adjudicator and the use of a collaboration tool to assist with information exchange and decision-making. Post-experiment analyses confirmed the usefulness of these concepts and resulted in several recommendations, both for the near term and for the longer term. Collectively, these changes amount to a paradigm shift in how UAS operations are managed, away from the current stove-piped processes towards a common structured process, with adjudication as the central concept.