As 2020 is well underway, I wanted to take an opportunity to look back at how far the drone industry has come, and how this has helped drones support many other industries. The past decade saw innovations in drone technology as well as the evolution of drone regulations, both of which helped increase adoption among enterprises while creating more opportunities for commercial pilots.
At DroneBase, two industries that we have seen dramatic transformation in their drone use are the insurance and construction industries.
For the insurance industry, I wrote a piece for Property Casualty 360 about How This Decade’s Tech Has Changed the Insurance Industry. Technology has become interwoven into our daily lives throughout the last decade. For the insurance industry specifically, drones have helped insurers issue claims to consumers quickly and reliably.
This is especially important during natural disasters. It’s always important for insurers to get claims to customers as fast as possible, and drone inspection services can help reduce the claims adjustment period from 11 days to 5 or 6 days. We’ve seen a lot of terrible disasters over the last decade such as Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Irma, and more, and DroneBase is extremely proud of the work we have done to help communities recover more quickly.
The construction industry has also benefited from drones over the past decade, from evaluating new development sites to monitoring progress during construction. As you’ll see in Construction Dive, the aerial imagery and data acquired from drone construction services allows builders to gain insights through advanced analytics to make better, faster and more reliable decisions.
As drones have become a daily tool for contractors, drones have helped increase safety while monitoring sites and assessing stockpiles. Looking to the future, advanced sensors, such as thermal and light detecting and ranging (LiDAR) sensors, will become an important go-to tool for stakeholders and project managers to gather additional data.
There have been incredible advancements in the 2010s. As we move into this new year and decade, I’m excited to see the progress of drone technology and how different industry professionals are able to leverage drones to make better, real-time decisions about their most critical assets.