Drones for Disaster Response Blueprint

Solution Background

How This Solution Emerged

This solution was born during a major disaster, Hurricane Melissa that made landfall on October 28, 2025 as an extraordinarily powerful Category 5 hurricane, with sustained winds near 185 miles per hour, making it the strongest storm on record to strike Jamaica. 

As impacts spread across the island, responders faced growing uncertainty about where damage was concentrated, and which areas required immediate attention. 25,000 people were displaced, 116,000 structures destroyed or severely damaged, and 40,000 acres of farmland damaged.

The Value of Drone Data

Drone data is an important data source to complement satellite imagery during and after disasters, due to its timeliness, high resolution and ability to see beneath clouds. In addition to geospatial data, deploying drone pilots to map devastated areas allows to acquire important other information and data such as access issues, emergencies reported by community members, etc. Through Jamaica Flying Labs’ Melissa Response, we have also learned that drone pilots can spread hope amongst the most vulnerable and affected communities, just by being present, showing that their loss is documented and shared, and lending an open ear to their struggles.

Solution Content

The solution provides a blueprint to guide locally led, globally supported drone responses after major disasters, available to Flying Labs and partners for replication should their country face a major disaster. 

The blueprint is made up of:

1. A live dashboard based on ArcGIS infrastructure, including following features:
   1. Tasking manager for government officials, to decide what areas need mapping
   2. Drone pilot sign-up form, to create a raster of drone pilots available to map the designated areas. This function also allows to align with local regulations, and provides a tool to CAAs to manage emergency situations and permissions to accredited pilots.
   3. Overview of areas mapped, with drone data ready for visualization for government actors and responders
2. Cloud-based data processing and sharing infrastructure, allowing data to flow efficiently and in a fully managed way across the various actors
3. Detailed roles, workflows and processes for all actors involved: area tasking, flight allocation, drone mapping, drone data processing, data analysis
4. Coordination mechanisms across the workflows, including with drone hardware and software partners who provide in-kind support

Involved Actors & Roles

This solution is co-led by Jamaica Flying Labs, WeRobotics and Esri. 

Hear directly from key actors involved in the Melissa response on their experiences of contributing to this collaborative solution:

What’s Next

Building the blueprint during a major disaster allowed us to create a minimal viable solution (MVP). We now want to:

1. Expand the MVP into a more solid solution (V1), based on invaluable feedback received from all actors involved in the Melissa response
2. Replicate and deploy V1 during a next major disaster, in the Caribbean and beyond, to test it and improve it through a next live scenario
3. Further improve it to have a solution that is both light and flexible, to adapt to different geographies and needs.

How You Can Get Involved and Join This Solution Space

• Technology & Consulting partners: support us in improving the data management infrastructure
• Drone hardware companies: join the partner ecosystem of this space, to contribute with technology during the next deployment
• Funders and investors: support the development of V1, including testing and improving it during a next major disaster.
• Civil society organizations and National Disaster Management / government agencies: learn from the Jamaica response and contribute or integrate the solution into your major responses.