Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAV), commonly known as drones, are being routinely applied to capture data in numerous scientific applications. The capabilities of drone-mounted sensors address the critical scale gap between ground- and satellite-based observations by collecting high-resolution data (mm-cm scale) over large surface areas (1–10 km2 and greater). Their advantage is the ability to deliver near-real-time society-relevant information.

As a new technology, however, there are currently no industry-wide accepted best practices for drone sensor and flight data handling and management. Without common standards, the development of mature tools for drone-captured data processing and fusion with other data sources is currently hampered. As a consequence, each use case generally develops a unique custom pipeline that only sees one-time use.

The aim of this session is to explore and discuss best practices for the management of drone-captured sensor and flight data and bring together the international user and developer communities.