The Belgian company Citymesh has introduced a network of 70 safety drones, built to assist emergency services in their work. In a world's first, police and fire stations in Belgium will have access to drones that take off within 15 minutes of receiving a call, capturing 4K high-definition and thermal images enriched with AI to provide critical information to emergency services. This will enable better and faster decision-making, helping to save lives. Following successful pilot projects, Citymesh completed the first full integration in Genk in 2022 and is now scaling up the programme to create a drone grid across Belgium.
For the implementation of this project, Citymesh is assisted by SkeyDrone, Cegeka, Aerial Vehicle Safety Solutions (AVSS) and IDLabTE.
IDLab's techno-economic research group (UGent-imec), led by Prof Sofie Verbrugge has expertise in business modelling and techno-economic analysis of a wide range of ICT solutions. IDLabTE will evaluate the social impact of DaaS, with reference to the European Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
