Chemical and radiological detection using UAV’s with ATEX compliance: Proof of concept in port and maritime incident-based scenarios

Abstract

Nowadays, oceans represent a very important part of our economies, as ways of communication between countries and because of the resources they contain, making their safety and protection major concerns that we all face. Because of this, there are several threats which must be dealt with. One of these threats are the Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) agents. In this framework, the development of technologies with the potential to increase the capabilities for detection of pollutants or toxic materials and situational awareness plays a significant role in the case of events in the scope of maritime accidents, pollution or port safety and security. These scenarios can pose substantial challenges to the operations, due to their complexity, and the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) is increasingly becoming ubiquitous in this context. This paper is focused in operation environment demonstrations, which aimed to validate the operational feasibility of the concept simulating two different scenarios; chemical and radiological. The selected scenarios were chosen on a risk probability analysis, being very approximate to a real-life incident. This system was tested, and the validation tests are also represented. It proved to be an asset in CBRN releases, either intentional or non-intentional.