License and registration Re/Cappers, any clue how fast you were going? You blew through that stop sign to this Re/Cap, but it’s understandable, given the story about drones-as-first-responders (DFR) that awaits.
It is a story of a first, but DFRs on the whole are practically department veterans. Their roots trace back to 2017, with the Federal Aviation Administration’s UAS Integration Pilot Program (IPP), which wanted to test and evaluate the integration of civil and public drone ops into the National Airspace System.
In October 2018, California’s Chula Vista Police Department (CVPD) saw which way the wins were blowing, and launched the nation’s first official DFR program. The era of high flyin’, dockin’ dominatin’ law enforcement was underway. And to think, “chula vista” means “beautiful view” in English. Oh universe, you wild thing.
Fritz Reber, a former CVPD captain, is considered one of the originators of the DFR concept. He coined the phrase, “DFR is not cops getting drones quickly on the scene; it’s a way for drones to get cops quickly on scene.”
The program started with a single rooftop launch site in 2018 and quickly expanded to four locations after receiving FAA approval. By June 2024, the program had logged over 20,000 flights, handling incidents from noise complaints to homicides. CVPD’s success galvanized other law enforcement agencies, with many replicating the southern California pioneers’ model, boasting supplemental advanced tech like Live911.
By December of last year, the concept of DFR had progressed from its initial stages (DFR 1.0) to a more advanced iteration (DFR 3.0), incorporating autonomous infrastructure and a suite of improved capabilities. All in under a decade.
And now, another Golden State city is making waves as the first to receive a brand new FAA waiver, that may just usher in DFR 4.0. That Re/Cap’s due up first.
What a time. Because if you thought RoboCop was tough on crime – wait’ll you get a payload of RotorCop.
What’s Cappenin’ This Week: A California city gets an unprecedented FAA drone waiver, man’s best friend and digital twins give the cancer fight a win, NASA leads to a new single-photon LiDAR, GIS fuels lofty cycling goals for cities, and an AEC Error of the Week in which a Chicago skyscraper lost its marble
Quick ‘Caps: Leica partners to train tomorrow’s architects, a trove of drone news, some bonkers Insta360 whale footage, OpenAI eyes robots & VR, AI-in-construction predictions for 2025, and quantum & AI tackle battery upcycling
Last week: Cities get ranked by percentage of women in construction, XR keeps rail training on track, photogrammetry sheds new light on early industry’s child labor, LiDAR gets a 2025 tutorial, and an AEC Error of the Week that made molasses fatal
Elk Grove, CA was founded in 1850 as a stage stop for travelers.
Today, it’s a crime stop for citizens, thanks to an unprecedented DFR (drone as first responder) initiative greenlit by the FAA.
The waiver allows for 24/7, whole-city public safety drone use, at up to 400 feet AGL (2X previous limitations) without the need for visual observers/rooftop personnel (BVLOS). There’s optimism that EGPD’s DFR operations could achieve 75% greater efficiency in emergency responses.
Described as the “Holy Grail” of DFR capabilities, EGPD’s Flock Safety solution includes all-weather resilience, advanced radar tech, automated docking, and an Airspace Awareness Module. It’s the latest feather in EGPD’s innovation cap *cough 1,000 drone flights cough*, of which other cities are starting to take note. Commercial UAV News details the waiver specifications, the EGPD innovation philosophy, DFR scalability, the Real Time Crime Center, and public input, linked below.
The adoption of “comparative oncology” in recent years is not unlike that of industrial digital transformation – up and to the right.
CO is a type of animal cancer study, wherein the objective is to of course aid our beloved critters. Yet, in certain cases, a byproduct is expanded education about human cancers, due to incidental genetic and cellular similarities.
A hallmark CO is bladder cancer, as the similarities of its expression between us and dogs have long piqued scientists. Now, however, a whole kennel of academics are ushering in a new CO chapter using, hey whaddya know – digital transformation.
Six faculty members at Purdue University are using a deluge of data sets to build digital twins of bladder cancer. And it is off to quite the auspicious start, with canine models already simulating and analyzing metastasis (the spreading to a secondary site).
The once-lofty ambition of profound prediction, and prompt treatment, may not be so unattainable. Purdue University shares their twinning strategy below, exploring the brain trust behind it, machine learning integration, the doggy model & our model, metastasis difficulties, image classification, molecular subtypes, and implications for other species.
There’s a NASA & friends Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and it’s propelling a lot more than spacecraft.
Or actually, a lot less – as in massless.
Lacking mass is the defining quality of photons, the building blocks of light and in turn, LiDAR. And JPL’s tool just made detection & ranging more accurate than a clairvoyant sports bettor.
It goes by SNSPD, but at parties it introduces itself as superconducting nanowire single-photon detector. Harnessed by 15 researchers from the UK’s Heriot-Watt University, it has crafted a bewildering accurate LiDAR system. We’re talking a system timing resolution 10x better than similar LiDAR systems, and clear 3D imaging of a human face from up to half a mile away.
The operative word is “clear,” as the system also makes quick work of smoke, fog, debris, foliage, you name it; music to the ears of security, monitoring, and remote sensing enthusiasts.
Linked below is Interesting Engineering’s laser focus on the single-photon time-of-flight tech, eye safety and spatial resolution improvements, the plethora of use cases, and what the next test entails, all linked below. Additionally, get graduate-level and enjoy the proper study as published on Optica.
Driving is full of revelations and aphorisms, most of which reflect our hubris and love of convenience: “90% of drivers think they’re above average,” “You’re not stuck in traffic, you are traffic,” “Sitting is the new smoking,” and so forth.
Distill each of those, and one lands at issues of danger, time waste, and health. And these problems have experienced their own revelation in recent years, at least in cities – the bicycle.
That’s not news to many. But what GIS is doing to accelerate city biking 2.0, is a maptastic headline.
Minneapolis, Minnesota and Redding, California are two prime case studies. The former’s goal of 60% of all trips by 2030 occurring in a non-private automobile is kindling for innovation. And it’s igniting, leveraging GIS and dynamic maps to upend the old ways, ignite new ways, and optimize biking. Redding, on the other hand, is developing bike-friendly infrastructure so alluring, it’s becoming a bona fide tourist draw.
Explore this next gear of GIS-fueled biking in the recent Esri blog post below.
In the heart of Chicago, where the winds howl and the temperatures swing like the world’s most mercurial pendulum, the Aon Center stands as a towering testament to architectural prowess…and a deep dish of marble-clad hubris.
When it was completed in 1973, the Aon Center (then the Standard Oil Building) proudly wore its crown as the world’s tallest marble-clad building. Wrapped in 43,000 slabs of pristine Italian Carrara marble, from the very quarry some bloke named Michelangelo used for some other bloke named David, it was a beacon of sophistication.
Little did anyone know, it was also a marble meteor shower in-waiting.
The architects opted for marble slabs a mere 1 1/4 inches thick, a decision that proved to be as sage as putting ketchup on your hot dog in front of a Chicagoan. Because, on Christmas Day 1973, before the building was even finished, a 350-pound marble slab detached and crashed through the roof of the nearby (thankfully empty) Prudential Center. Worst Santa arrival ever.
By 1985, the building was showing more cracks than a mirror in a WWE ring. The marble was bowing outward thanks to thermal hysteresis, permanently deformed by Chicago’s extreme temperature swings. In a desperate attempt of fortification, engineers strapped the marble panels with stainless steel, turning the ‘scraper into the world’s tallest marble corset.
Finally, from 1990 to 1992, the building underwent a complete makeover. The entire facade was replaced with 2”-thick granite, to the tune of $80 million, nearly doubling the building cost.
The discarded marble? Well, perfect for landscape work at an oil refinery for one thing. The rest was donated to various causes, including, uh, trophies for staff awards. From skyscraper to paperweight – now that’s a demotion.
They say football is a game of inches. That’s cute, because AEC is a game of fractions of them, which is precisely where reality capture shines.
Imagine if we had today’s reality capture back in the Aon Center’s disco days.
Photogrammetry and high-precision 3D laser scanning could have created a detailed digital twin of the building, enabling monitoring of even the slightest deformations in real-time. Engineers could have spotted those bowing marble slabs before they decided to take a nosedive resembling the post-Michael Jordan Bulls.
Thermal imaging drones could have conducted regular facade inspections, identifying those temperature-induced warps and other potential weak points. Advanced simulations, fed by this wealth of data, could have predicted the marble’s long-term behavior under Chicago’s penchant for gnarly weather.
With an exhaustive BIM model, facility managers could have tracked the condition of each marble panel, predicting maintenance needs and potential failures before they became critical. They could have simulated various cladding options virtually, saving millions in real-world trial and error.
In the end, the Aon Center stands as a gleaming reminder that when it comes to reality capture-less architecture, sometimes it’s best to take the phrase “solid as a rock” with a grain of salt – or in this case, a slab of granite.
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