EDR Leaders

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 'EDR Leaders' 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.

Capt. Vendelin Clicques

Capt. Vendelin Clicques has been a firefighter officer since 2011, after initially training as an aeronautical maintenance engineer.

Vendelin has specialized in RPAS/UAV systems since 2015. Former drone team manager of Essonne fire dept (SDIS91), he is actually the UAS team manager of the Yvelines Fire dept (SDIS78). He is also part of the UAS national working group of French civil protection and the regional UAS advisor of Paris.

Since the 10th of June 2018, he has been the president founder of the IEDO, International Emergency Drone Organization, the world nonprofit association by and for Public Safety UAS specialists. This world association regroups more than 800 members (firefighters, police, customs, coast-guards, doctors, paramedics, SAR associations,...) from 55 countries from 6 continents. The main objective of IEDO is to bring together first responders who use drones to save lives to share their knowledge and experience with each other on an international and national level.

EDR: The first thing I would like to ask you about is the Pink Firefighters Charity ; what is the charity, and how do you help support this?

Vendelin: In 2021, I founded the PINK FIREFIGHTERS association in France because I have a friend who had breast removal surgery as a preventive measure against breast cancer. This shocked and impressed me a lot. How can you voluntarily separate yourself from a part of your body? Inspired by her courage, I wanted to inform the public about breast cancer. Being very sporty and used to technical firefighter challenges, I decided to create a pink firefighter outfit to shock and create the question, why a firefighter in pink? Then carried by my individual success and my sponsors I founded the international association PINK FIREFIGHTERS to mobilize several firefighters in different countries to inform and prevent against breast cancer while surpassing themselves on the firefighter's challenges. Today, 2 years later, our association gathers 15 pink firefighters from France, the UK, Germany, Portugal and the Czech Republic. It's a project that is close to my heart because breast cancer concerns us all, mainly 1 woman out of 8, it's so much too much, and also us men because we all have a mother, a wife, a sister or a daughter in our life. Do you love her? Protect her by talking to her about screening, self-examination and mammography.

EDR: You are known as an important drone advocate for Public Safety; when

did you first become involved with Drones Operationally?

Vendelin: I will always remember. It was in 2015, a close friend was showing me his drone (from Christmas) and I fell in love with it. The spark ignited my brain. What a fabulous tool to discover, understand and apprehend an operational situation from the sky. It was a professional evidence. The following week, as a young lieutenant, I convinced the deputy chief of the necessity and the benefit of developing a drone program within my fire department. Two years later, I made the first drone flight on a violent building fire at nightfall.

One thing is for sure: developing and building a drone program is an obstacle course that starts with convincing your boss.

EDR: As an operational fire Captain in Paris region, how important are sUAS Drones in your day-to-day operations?

Vendelin: The awareness of incident commanders is growing about drones. Assigned to the dispatch platform, I managed to convince the operators of the usefulness of drones, in the field, the few officers who have benefited from the drone support of my team are convinced and regularly request air support. The activity of my drone team is growing.

EDR: What are the most valuable aspects of a Drone Program for your requirements?

Vendelin: Your many readers already know that the operational needs are the awareness of an operational situation, the search for victims and air support (lighting, guidance, dropping, sound alert). What is most interesting in a drone program in my opinion is its usefulness for incident commanders, which is proportional to its difficulty of management. All the operations that have benefited from drone support reveal the same thing: the great usefulness and benefit of the information collected for good management and decision support. But what few people know is that managing a drone program is riding a wave that never stops. It never stops because drone regulations are constantly evolving, technology is jumping extremely quickly while being more and more expensive, data regulations that must be followed, security events (crash, breakdown, breakage, incident) are significant and they require continual

Vendelin: analysis and information of the crews, the maintenance of the skills of the pilots is also to be monitored because it is essential. In short, the life of a drone program manager is not easy. And those who are full-time on this position are LUCKY. Because many are those who manage a drone program in parallel with a full-time position.

EDR: What are the Challenges of Public Safety drone use in a highly populated city such as the Paris region ?

Vendelin: Drone operations in ultraurbanized environments are decisive but very complex. These densely populated areas require rapid and efficient incident management because the population is demanding. Drones will be able to facilitate and accelerate important decisions and consequently limit human losses and damage. However, that is without forgetting all the additional difficulties caused by these densely populated areas. Indeed, the risks of interference and accidents are greater because of the density of the population. The flight zones are much smaller if you consider that you can only fly over the incident zone and avoid the population.

EDR: What new technological developments are making the most significant impact helping you carry out your role?

Vendelin: Technological innovations are numerous. The most basic ones are quickly appreciated such as the increase in battery life, camera performance, miniaturization of components which facilitate a decreasing weight for the latest drones. All these elements provide greater comfort in our missions. And there are also ongoing strategic innovations, the development of AI which will facilitate the processing of data and technical manipulations. The DFR programs are impressive in their architecture and the acceleration of the integration of an emergency situation. The future digitization of the sky, the U-space, is also coming extremely quickly. This is an innovation for civilian drones but it translates into a real challenge for emergency drones to manually integrate into an automated digital environment (geocaging, geofencing). As stated above, the wave does not don't stop, she's growing up.

EDR: In addition to the Pink FireFighters Charity, you are also President of the International Emergency Drone Organisation (IEDO). For those readers who are not aware of the IEDO, could you tell me its mission?

Vendelin: Of course with pleasure. The IEDO is an international non-profit association based in France which was founded in 2018. Its objective is to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and experience between drone pilots who save lives and to promote drones with security services. public and the population. Exchanges beyond borders and uniforms since the members are firefighters, police officers, customs officers, coastguards, SAR association, paramedics, doctors. The IEDO is the one and only global community made up of 100% public safety drone pilots. Drone companies and their employees are not accepted as an IEDO member to maintain strong ethics against conflicts of interest. But for all that, the IEDO has many industrial partners and sponsors. The values within the IEDO are strong and driven by the principle of neutrality and fairness between our members, their societies and their countries. Strong egos have no place in our community; we advocate collaborative and collective work before individualities for the common good of all pilots. Our community represents more than 800 pilots from 55 countries on all continents.

IEDO has entered into two strategic partnerships with two major international associations: the International Police Association (IPA, representing 400k police officers) and the CTIF, international association of fire and rescue services (CTIF, representing 4 million firefighters). These 2 organizations support the IEDO in more and more projects.

EDR: What do you consider the key achievements of the IEDO are?

Vendelin: The first success of IEDO was, I think, to federate more than 800 pilots from 55 countries in only 4 years.

Second, I can tell you about several successes that have marked the history of IEDO.

In 2019, a British IEDO member informed us of the disturbing disappearance of a young tourist in mountainous regions in Peru. We alerted the first Peruvian member who had just joined IEDO, 24 hours later he deployed with his drone to the search area. This was the only international coordination operation that we carried out but if we are needed, we will be there.

In 2021, after 14 months of work and collaboration between 13 national working groups, IEDO published the International Report on Good Drone Practices for Fire and Rescue Missions, a 100-page report with best practices and advice collected from 13 countries. This huge and international project has been rewarded with the AUVSI award for public safety excellence. This project was a real collective success. I am proud of the 73 volunteer contributors. The updated V2 report was published in December 2022.

On December 12 and 13, 2022, our association organized its biggest project: a world conference on emergency drone in Paris at the Cité des Sciences. A rare and extraordinary event that brought together more than 200 drone experts from 31 countries from the USA to Japan and Europe. 54 fire departments, 25 law enforcement agencies, 19 search and rescue associations, a coast guard service and a medical service were represented. Many international experts shared their experience (Beirut explosion, landslide in Norway, PD Pearland's BVLOS DFR program, Zagreb earthquake, etc.) and knowledge (Hazmat, DFR, NIST, etc.) such as Rich Gatanis or Brandon Karr. On this occasion, we announced the launch of the police drone commission, as we have the ambition to develop the police community within IEDO regarding all emerging topics (anti-drone, DFR program, indoor recon, etc.).

EDR: What is the future for the IEDO ?

Vendelin: The next IEDO CONF will be held in 2024. We are actively working to finalize the creation of our Fire & Rescue Drone Commission which will support numerous technical working groups (hazmat, fire, USAR, regulations, etc). We also plan to develop a non-profit training division supported by volunteer trainers on national and international levels. A lot of ambition and international projects as usual for our non-profit association IEDO, that's why we are looking to develop and consolidate our financial partnerships, that's why we are launching an appeal to all patrons and generosity.

To find out more information about the International Emergency Drone Organization (IEDO). Please visit their website or reach out to them across social media.