Drone claims inspection

On December 31, 2020, Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/947 became applicable in France, opening the transition that replaces national flight scenarios with three European categories: open, specific and certified. For a loss adjusting firm, that text decides what a drone may do over a hail-hit housing estate. Drone claims inspection means flying an unmanned aircraft over the damaged property to capture photographs, video, thermal readings or a photogrammetric model, instead of a site visit on foot or to prepare one. Claims handlers know the use cases: roofs after hail or windstorm, warehouses and large farm buildings, sites cut off by a flood or a fire. The adjuster no longer climbs onto the roof, which removes a fall hazard, and the dated survey goes into the file as evidence. After a mass event, the point is throughput: one remote pilot covers a whole street in a day, and the images can then go through a computer vision model that flags broken tiles. Flight rules weigh heavily. In the open category, the drone stays within visual line of sight, below 120 meters, and does not fly over assemblies of people; a dense urban area or a beyond-visual-line-of-sight flight usually falls into the specific category, with a declaration under a standard scenario or an authorization from the authority. Airport surroundings and prohibited zones stay closed, however large the event. The drone sees the building envelope, never the inside: water ingress under the roof structure or electrical damage still needs someone on site. The images also capture neighbors' gardens, which brings the GDPR into the flight protocol.