LEADERS IN INDUSTRY

As a way of providing shared learning to our community, The Emergency Drone Responder Magazine will be shining a light on select individuals who are at the forefront of drone use within emergency services. Our 'Leaders in Industry' section offers a deep dive into their expertise, history and insights in the hope that their work and achievements will provide valuable knowledge and inspiration to a wider network of emergency drone responders.

Chief Charles L. Werner Ret. has served 49 years in public safety. Charles started his career as a firefighter with the Charlottesville VA Fire Dept. and served for 37 years, serving the last ten years as fire chief. Charles also served two years as a reserve deputy with the Albemarle County Sheriffs Office. Following retirement, Chief Werner served for 2 years as senior advisor and acting deputy state coordinator for the Virginia Dept of Emergency Management. He presently serves as Director/Founder of DRONERESPONDERS and is an FAA Certificated Remote Pilot. Charles also serves on numerous UAS Advisory Boards. In 2022, Charles joined the Virginia Department of Aviation as an aviation technology advisor on UAS, CUAS and Advanced Air Mobility.

Charles serves on the International Fire Chiefs Technology Council, International Association of Chiefs of Police Aviation Committee, International Public Safety Association Advisory Board, and appointed by Virginia's governor to serve on the Secure and Resilient Commonwealth Panel.

Chief Werner is a contributor to numerous magazines with over 300 nationally and internationally published articles.

The DRONERESPONDERS Public Safety Alliance

In 2019, DRONERESPONDERS was formed for the specific purpose of advancing public safety Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (UAS). The first step was to provide a Resource Center that would help guide public safety agencies on the process of implementing UAS Programs.

The DRONERESPONDERS Resource Center has over 800 documents including but not limited to best practices, lessons learned, SOPs, community outreach, checklists, reports and information on counter UAS, Uncrewed Traffic Management (UTM) and Advanced Air Mobility (AAM). DRONERESPONDERS has over 7000 members, participation from 85 countries and 1400 website visits per week. DRONERESPONDERS.org is open to public safety organizations, government, academia, non-governmental organizations and industry. MEMBERSHIP AND ACCESS TO ALL RESOURCES IS FREE.

DRONERESPONDERS partnered with the NASA AMES Research Center and ESRI to develop a Global Public Safety Drone Directory/Dashboard which is managed by former Pearland TX Police Officer Brandon Karr.

As of January 2023, the dashboard is nearing 1300 agencies which are providing each of their UAS program information such as start date, types of missions they fly, number of remote pilots, payloads and more which promotes coordination and collaboration with nearby agencies for new program startups, facilitates regional training and development of regional UAS response teams. The dashboard allows for filtering by state, discipline and more.

DRONERESPONDERS has partnered with NIST to promote the use of the Standard Test Methods for Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems which provides an objective way to train and evaluate basic manoeuvring skills. This is available in the FREE Resource Center.

On waivers, DRONERESPONDERS worked with public safety agencies to facilitate the first FAA Tactical Beyond Visual Line of Sight (TBVLOS) waiver to allow emergency remote pilots to fly BVLOS during dangerous missions like SWAT, hazmat response and more.

This year will be huge for the Drone as a First Responder (DFR) Program with a DFR Guidance Template from the FAA and our DFR International

Initiative partnership with UAS Norway. The DFR concept involves launching a drone BVLOS at the time of emergency incident dispatch to fly over an emergency incident to provide real time situational awareness prior to arrival of ground units.

On the Counter UAS aspect, DRONERESPONDERS initiated a CUAS Working Group to share information on CUAS, and promote CUAS authority to the state, local, tribal and territorial agencies.