On 16 June 2022, Dr Vassilis Agouridas, a leader of the UAM (Urban Air Mobility) Initiative Cities Community (UIC2), visited a Ljubljana Fire Brigade with the AV Living Lab team for a meeting with Željko Gudžulič from the City of Ljubljana, Robert Okorn, PR expert, and Jure Dolinar, a Shift leader at the Ljubljana Fire Brigade.
The fire brigade team explained their use of drones in firefighting interventions and the challenges firefighters undergo regularly. They discussed how innovative solutions in the field of (UAM) could help with that and the more extensive use of drones for firefighting operations.
Ljubljana Fire Brigade uses two DJI Mavic drones for heat mapping and an aerial view of the damaged zone. The mentioned drones can also help with the coordination and allocation of resources. In some cases, it can be the only possible view of the situation when intervening on challenging accessible terrains.
Search and rescue use cases are becoming an essential driver of research and development of urban air mobility. With bird-view and additional sensors, drones will enable faster and more efficient firefighting and supporting operations while increasing the safety of firefighters.
Vassilis Agouridas was in Ljubljana for his scheduled participation in a plenary session at Velo-City 2022. He was expressing his views on the latest urban mobility innovations. He believes in the power of UAM co-creation with the involvement of people from different disciplines to achieve the social desirability of new technologies.
Vassilis Agouridas is the Leader of the UAM Initiative Cities Community (UIC2) of the EU’s Smart Cities Marketplace, Head of EU Public Co-Creation & Ecosystem Outreach at Airbus Urban Mobility, and Chairman of the UAM Committee of ASD Europe. He was also a speaker at the City as a Lab Mobility Summit in 2020 and 2021, organized by AV Living Lab.
