 Okay, we are live and we got Dan again. Boy, you're pretty popular, Dan. You run everything over there, all the fun things. You do the trains and the planes and gosh, you do it all. We've got a lot going on. You have all the good things. So we're going to talk about, you're in a drone business too? Yeah, so thank you, Senator. For the record, Dan Delabriere, Rail Aviation Bureau Director, and I have with me my team. I have Evan Robinson, who's our UAS Manager, and I have Roland Tebbets, who's our Airport Operations and Maintenance Manager. So I have my team with me. We're going to go through a little bit about, so about four years ago, we started our drone program at VTrans and we are what FAA considers we're the experts in drones in the state. So when other people have questions about drones, or there's rulemaking or things like that, they come to us. So Evan put together a PowerPoint presentation and Liz, I think, did you get that, Liz? I sent that to you. I have it, I can present it or I've made everybody in your team co-host if they want to share screen, whatever you want. Evan, why don't you give it a shot? Do a share screen, if it doesn't work, I'll do it. Yeah, our last couple, Evan, that you weren't on didn't quite work, so we had Liz run it. But if you want to go ahead and pull that up and share your screen, we'll start with that. Jane, this probably replaces the governor's airplane. Remember we had that for you? This just replaces the governor's airplane that Shelby wanted, okay. We don't have an airplane anymore, but we do have a bunch of drones. So that looks like the interstate just by fairly by the Palisades and the bridge across to Orford. Yeah, it is, back in 2019, we actually flew those ledges prior to that construction project. Our biologists were up there looking for bat habitat prior to that construction. So that is a picture from that location. Wow, that's amazing. I guess everyone can see the screen okay. Wow, very good. All right, well, first of all, thanks for having us on and being able to talk to you guys about the V-Trans UAS program. You may see UAS as either unmanned aircraft systems or unmanned aerial systems. It's kind of interchangeable. I always went with unmanned aircraft systems. Unmanned, I'll come. That's not on woman, Jane. Should be an unpersoned aircraft. That's right, yeah. Right. And now, I mean, it's humanity. I understand the origins of our language. I've got other bigger issues on my mind. Great. Okay. All right, so just a brief word on the mission of our program. We're here to fly safe and efficient UAS operations in full compliance of all FAA rules and regulations. Just a few specific flight examples would include for emergency response, infrastructure inspection, construction site monitoring, as well as just providing high resolution aerial imagery. A little bit of background on our team. We lie within the policy planning and intermodal development portion of the trans specifically in the Rail and Aviation Bureau. Our team has six FAA part 107 certified remote pilots in command, as well as four additional people that are on the team who we use as solely visual observers. So we operate all of our missions with a pilot and an observer who is there to help us discern hazards and be in communication with the pilot. One really critical other role for our team is we have a GIS analyst and computer programmer. And that person has been able to help us elevate our program to be able to share all the great data that we were able to produce. We also have pilots based around the state, Lindenville, Barry, Morrisville, and Rutland to name a few. So a good geographic location for pilots. A little bit of background on what it takes to become a commercial drone pilot. There's two ways to get your license. The first would be for someone who doesn't have any prior aviation experience or a pilot's license. That person would have to take a 60 question test issued by the FAA on all sorts of operating rules as they relate to UAS, airspace classification and operation within the national airspace system, weather, radio communications, emergency procedures, airport operations, as well as maintenance and inspection procedures of the drones. Now that's a lot of different topics to cover. So our pilots are really fully aware of all the regulations and they have to have a really diverse aviation knowledge to be an efficient drone pilot. Another route which five of our six pilots on our team have gone, if you have an existing part 61 certificate, which means you're able to fly in real aircraft in your private pilot's license or your commercial or instrument rating, you qualify to get a drone rating as an add-on. Now that's all of your aviation knowledge that goes into those ratings has so much carryover into all the drone regulations. They account for that previous aviation experience. Within VTRANS, all of our pilots and crew members go through an initial pilot training and flight check. They participate in recurrent training. They have drone specific training. So all of our drones we operate are a little bit different. They have different capabilities. So we're all well versed in the different drone platforms. Our pilots have to maintain a flight currency. That means they have to fly a certain amount of time every 60 days to be able to pilot our missions. And we also participate in night operations training as well as any applicable safety training. So a little bit here, VTRANS UAS by the numbers. In the last two years, we've flown a total of 106 missions of varying categories in totaling approximately 700 total flights. Now our pilots have logged over 100 flight hours combined and we've served four separate state agencies with our services. And we also operate five different drones. Now each one of those drones has a diverse capability and depending on the mission criteria, we may select one over the other. Now one of the biggest issues we've had to overcome with our program development is how can we make UAS data accessible to within AOT as well as to other Vermont state agencies? Now some of the biggest challenges we faced are file size limitations. For example, if we go and we map one of our airports with over a thousand photos, that could be between 10 to 20 gigabytes of data. Now that's not easily sent in an email. So how do we move beyond that? How do we get over the varying IT infrastructure and accessibility from agency to agency? So how can somebody from VTRANS share something with somebody from the agency and natural resource? Well, it's not real easy. So we've developed in-house a UAS imagery viewing application. Now you'll see me refer to this application several times throughout the presentation. What it is, it's a VTRANS hosted cash tile imagery service. So essentially we own all the imagery and we upload it to this service. And other people are able to view it without needing for us to send them the files directly. Essentially, we're putting it in a depository where they can read it and grab the information at their own will. So it eliminates large file transfers from agency to agency. GIS professionals from any state agency can grab this information, like I said, whenever they feel like it. And this is publicly facing, so anybody can view this. In fact, we have the link to this on our webpage. Just to show us some examples of what our high resolution imagery looks like. So we would take an area, we would go fly, take downward facing photos, hundreds or even thousands of them if it's a large area. And we have a computer program that stitches them all together into a geo-referenced high resolution map. So think Google images, you know, your Google Earth imagery but to a very, very detailed extent. So here's an example of the Rutland Airport. You can see the vibrant color surrounding the airport is where we have current imagery from. Onto the right, as we zoom in, you're starting to see more detail on the runway intersection. And then the next page here is just a really great example of the clarity that we can achieve. So our, you know, you can see runway lights, you can see all of the lettering and the pavement condition, all of the cracks. That's a really powerful tool for us in many applications. Currently, V-Trans, we have conducted several missions. These categories are just a few, for example. And as we move forward, you'll see some scenarios and use cases of these types of missions. But we're using the drones for infrastructure inspection, post-weather event damage analysis and the damage extent mapping, project status tracking, be a high resolution imagery. We can use our imagery to create obstruction analysis, specifically at our airports. Our public outreach team uses our imagery on social media and on our website. We've used the drones for traffic pattern monitoring, geological stability and landslide mapping, as well as documentation of historic structures and locations. Just getting into some of the emergency management use cases, this here is an image that we took back in 2019. And we had some flooding along the White River corridor. This is the White River spilling out into Route 14 in Royalton. And although the consequences were fairly low for this specific image, you're able to kind of see how a picture can be so valuable to display damage extent or the severity of a flooding or other natural disaster event. This is an example of some high resolution imagery. Again, we went out in a couple hours, we flew this area, took several hundred photos, stitched them together with our software program and created this highly detailed map. Now, again, this is an area where there wasn't any consequences. This was when we were first learning for a test, but it's really powerful to show like you can overlay this in near real time, see the overall extent of where the flooding goes. So you can see there the stream bed and how far the standing water extends beyond its bank. So this would be a really powerful use case for a natural disaster or flooding event in the future. Here we were able to provide some high resolution pictures for the Loveland Brook Bridge failure. This was back in November of 2019 while the Halloween storm that took this bridge out. You can see from these photos, it's pretty severe damage and this bridge was actually replaced with the temporary bridge. Now, all the photos taken here were used in documentation as well as used potentially for federal reimbursement on projects like these. Same storm, GMRC washout in Cuttingsville. We were asked to go down and fly this and document this site as well. Same location, this is a snapshot from our imagery application. And I would just like to point out on the far right of the screen, you can see that that's the best quality that exists for aerial imagery for that area. And then as you travel to the left, you can just see the difference in the quality of the trees in our image versus what's actually available normally. Another documentation of the same storm, we were able to go out and capture imagery of the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail washout in Hyde Park. So just some considerations for emergency management. We are able to have rapid creation of high resolution maps and affected areas. Another really important part of role that UAS would play in an emergency is acting as eyes in the air. Now, is the location safe for our crews to even be? You know, we are able to send the drone up to assess the situation in real time and the emergency planners are able to make a call right then and there to say, hey, boy, this is safe, we can start work here or maybe the drone can go up and see hazards that aren't really necessarily seen from the ground. So it's a great tool to make an onsite safety assessment following an emergency. We do have search and rescue capability with our drones. We have a high resolution infrared camera. We're able also, like I said earlier to document these events for damage estimates and FEMA reimbursement. Where our public outreach teams are able to use our imagery to create public awareness about closures and damage extent. And our teams are deployable to various geographic locations because we do have drones and personnel located around the state. Getting into some of our more what I would call daily operations. Some of the requests we see that are not specifically emergency related. We have an example here, back in May, there was a rock slide in Smuggler's notch up on Route 108 in Cambridge. And the V-trans geologists were able to make a stability assessment based on our UAS imagery. Whoops, sorry, go back one. Now this location was not safely accessible on foot. So we launched from the closed Route 108 right from the road. And as you can see in this photo here, the drone captures a distinct debris field traveling from the rock slide down to Route 108. And if you look in the middle on the bottom of your screen there, you can actually see an excavator working on jackhammering the boulder that came to rest in Route 108. Now that boulder actually did hit a car. Fortunately, no one was in it. It was parked at the time. But we were able to capture that debris field. We were asked to go back again in November during leaf off conditions where it was a little easier to see. I want you to focus on that red area for the next slide. So this is straight up from Route 108. And we were able to fly from Route 108 right up to that red box. Now this location is the origin of the Route 108 rock slide. This is where all the material directly came from. Now we took a whole bunch of pictures of this area and the geologists from VTRANS and the Vermont Geological Survey were able to look at these photos and make some type of assessment on the stability and make judgments about recreation in that area in the future. Moving down south for this example, this is a rail bridge next to a highway bridge in Dorset, Vermont. Now there were some issues upstream of the highway bridge which is just out of the picture at the top of the screen. And we were asked to go down and fly this wetland to map the area in hopes that we would be able to help develop a flood mitigation plan. Now based on our high resolution imagery, we were able to zoom in. I'm just gonna next slide, pay attention to the red box. This is that same area just increased in size. The VTRANS hydro technicians along with agency and natural resources was able to locate downstream features that were potentially the cause of some of the flooding backup upstream. Now this map was assisted in developing a plan for the future to mitigate the flood in this area. So our program lies within the rail and aviation bureau. So we're definitely using drones in and around our airports when we can. We currently have high resolution imagery for eight of our 10 state airports with hopes to get the final two here this year upcoming. Many different use cases. We're able to use them for pavement condition assessment, asset management, developing permits, using our imagery on permits, vegetation management, as well as identification of potential obstructions in our airports approaches. Here's an example. This is down in Springfield of our current UAS imagery overlaid on a map just to help really clearly show potential new development on our airports. This is part of the 2019 master permitting plan for the state airports. So this bright colored product here is called a digital surface model. From our drone imagery, the same images we take to get the high resolution photo maps, we're able, the software is able to determine elevations based on all of those photos using a process called photogrammetry. Now, this specific photo here is a digital surface model of a V-Trans garage in District 9 in Irisburg. And you can see the elevations are from red to blue, blue being a low elevation, red being a higher elevation. For example, down on the bottom right, you see the tall trees are in red and the blue above that is at the bottom of a sand pit. Now, a model like this can be used for many different things. Specifically, we have many requests right now from the V-Trans water quality unit to fly our facilities where they're able to use a combination of the imagery and these digital surface models to help create a storm water plan. Now, GIS analysts can actually use a digital surface model like this. They can model runoff of water based on the terrain that's in these digital surface models. That helps them make a plan for best practices at our facilities in regards to storm water and other items like that. The imagery also can be used for developing a facility safety plans. And we look forward to flying more of these facilities. We currently have 15 active flight requests just for the spring at our V-Trans facilities. Our public outreach team at V-Trans uses many of our photos and videos for either a social media presence or on the website as well. Here's us a couple of examples. Back in May of 2020, we were able to assist with a food bank distribution at many of our airports. This one in particular was at Caledonia. And our public outreach team was able to use these photos to help spread the word that we're having these events and to help people understand what they may expect when they get to one of these events. As you can see, this post in particular reached over 18,000 people. Another example, just for project updates, the Middlebury Tunnel project, that was completed last year. There's another example of how our public outreach team uses our imagery to help spread the word about V-Trans and its projects. One of the huge successful parts of our program has been our collaboration with other state agencies. We've worked for several agencies. Our program is open and taking requests from any state agency that needs a drone operation. If we're able to fit it into our schedule and the mission makes sense, we're more than happy to fly for anyone. In this specific example, we were asked by buildings and general services to fly the McFarland State Office Building in Barrie. Now they asked us to fly the perimeter and take detailed photos of the bricks and the chimneys on the roofs. Now they used all of these photos, were given to a BGS project manager and architect to help prioritize repairs and budget accordingly into the future. This is a top-down look straight into the chimneys at BGS. Now, getting to the top of this chimney that you see here on the exterior was not accessible under traditional methods. The staging wouldn't work there, a ladder wouldn't work, and there weren't any alternative methods. In fact, the photos here, you can see the repairs end at a specific spot, meaning the very top of this chimney wasn't accessible. So the architect was really excited to see we were able to just zip up there and get some high-resolution photos. Similarly, back in 2019 for BGS, we flew at the Waterbury State Office Complex. We took over 500 photos of the slate roof surfaces and those photos were used again in prioritizing areas that needed repair. Another collaboration we have here is the... In 2019, we were asked by the Vermont Geological Survey to come out and fly the Cottonbrook landslide. This happened up on state land in the Cottonbrook drainage, the largest known landslide in Vermont or recorded landslide. And from our imagery, the agency and natural resources team was able to use our photos for public outreach. We created high-resolution maps for their analysis as well as a digital terrain model. They were able to estimate the volume of sediment that traveled down Cottonbrook into the Waterbury reservoir. And they're also able to make stability assessments to help guide the recreational openings and closings for that area. This landslide affected some recreational trails in the area. And it was a collaboration between us, the Vermont Geological Survey, Forest Parks and Rec, UVM and Norwich University. And we went back in August of 2020 to make a year-to-year comparison. And based on the imagery we created from 2019 to 2020, they were actually able to measure that the landslide increased in size by 1.4 acres of surface area. So really valuable to be able to see the change over time using drone imagery. Just another couple of shots. This is the outlet from 2019 following the initial slide. All of that fresh sediment and build up there is the landslide. All of that sediment made it down Cottonbrook into Waterbury reservoir. The geologists also made estimates, sorry, moving to 2020, they were able to make estimates of change from 2019 to 2020 down at the outlet as well. You can see there isn't much navigable water between the outlet and the edge of Waterbury reservoir. And another inter-agency collaboration, we have really forged this bond with the Vermont State Police UIS program. We've really developed our programs in parallel. We started at a very similar time. We've been in close contact with them. And we have developed fairly consistent procedures and operating principles. And we have also been involved with many collaborative training efforts. Specifically, I was invited down to a search and rescue and night operations training using UAS with them in September. And the point of that is we would really like to have a reciprocal UAS support established, meaning if VTrans has an event and we really need more UAS support, having consistent procedures and principles would allow the state police to come in and assist us if we needed it, as well as us being able to assist them on a search and rescue or a large crash reconstruction or anything like that. So really happy to have their support and to be involved with their operations. So looking forward, we really would just like to provide consistent and accurate UAS imagery for various transportation applications. We're working on continual development of integration of UAS for the agency of transportation. We're also continuing to work across agency lines to provide a valuable resource to all sections of Vermont government. We're ready for a rapid deployment in emergency situations. And we're also looking to just expand awareness and education regarding the efficiency and safety of UAS operations. Any questions? How many drones do you have? We operate five different drones. Five different ones. And what's their airtime, an hour, two hours? No, unfortunately not. 25 to 30 minutes at the most on some of our newer drones. And on average, I would say 20 to 25 minutes. So someone has to tell that drone to come back within 20 minutes or it automatically comes back. Yeah, it's a combination. It depends if you're flying an automated flight. You know, on our survey missions, we fly automated flights, so a predetermined grid. And yes, the drone will come home when the battery is at a specific level. It'll return. But if you're out flying manually capturing photos, the operator would generally bring it back. They run about electricity or they're... Yep, these are all lithium battery operated drones. Okay. And they charge them up with a couple of hours or something, they go back to them. Yeah, normally it takes about an hour for one set of batteries to charge. We have all sorts of different equipment. We have multiple sets of batteries, first of all, to get us through a day's worth of flying. But we do have multiple chargers and charging stations where sometimes the batteries charge. I can see that being a big asset for search and rescue for people that are lost, I mean, at daytime. Yeah, absolutely. As well as nighttime, the Vermont State Police have used their drones, attempted search and rescues. I'm not sure if they've found any subjects yet, but we also do have the same capability. So if there was a large scale event, having that collaboration with them would be beneficial. Take it. Yeah, go ahead. Do they have night vision capability? No, not that I'm aware of. At least that's publicly available. But the high resolution infrared essentially acts as a night vision if you're able to delineate those heat sources. Is that you up on a tower center angles up there with a jacket on? Is that you? It is, it is. Yeah, that was when I had hair. I can't imagine those guys walking around that place. Oh my God, look at it. No, no, that would not be me. Oh my God, with the snow up there and everything. Oh yeah. I hope he's tied in there. Anyway, that's amazing what drones can do in the future. Wow, that's amazing. Yeah, and I think if you look at where we started, we started out, we got some drones, we were like, well, we're gonna be able to do some imagery. But as our program has grown, there's just been almost infinite number of requests and different needs. So our program's growing. We seem to, Evan and Rollin, who are on the call here, have done a great job with this program, growing it, complying with all the FAA rules, making sure Vermont and other agencies in Vermont are complying with FAA rules as we are kind of the experts in this. No, this team's done a great job with this and I just see this program growing more and more. Can private enterprise hire that at an hourly fee, Dan? We haven't moved into that, Senator Engels. We aren't looking to do that. What we're really looking to do is offer services to our sister agencies more than the public because we see the need across, like Evan had mentioned, the agency of natural resources, state police, those types of folks. There's no real need for them to have their own program. We can offer the service for them, even though some of them do have their own program. Is that service available to you, Senator Engels, for real estate? I mean, are people doing that? I had a drone. It must be private enterprise. I had a drone and it was an inexpensive one and it's still flying away because it got a plea from me in the wind. And I've got another one that I spent quite a bit more money on it, but it's sitting right in the box wherever a good drone should be until you're qualified to run it. I would think there'd be people out there that are doing this for a living these days. There are. Oh, there are, okay. There are, and you do have to, and if you were going to use it for a real estate agency or something like that, you technically need to be a certified commercial pilot to do that. So it's not just anybody goes out and buys a drone in a box and starts using it. I went to our son's place a few weeks ago or months ago and he wanted to take a family picture and he sent his drone up and the drone took our picture and a nice family picture, just as perfect. And, you know, it's just amazing. I just couldn't believe it. And, you know, we all stood there and the drone comes in and takes our picture and then he lands it, you know, just, wow. Yeah, it's a great tool for sure. Yeah. And as I would just offer, you know, there's several more use case examples. I could have, we could have been here for hours talking about the stuff we've done in our hope and juice. So if anybody wants to learn more, just don't hesitate to reach out and be happy to go over in more detail with anyone. I'll tell you, Dan, you've got all the fun programs. I'll tell you, I'm gonna tell Joe Flynn that, you know, I'll give you a percentage or something, you know. Oh, we're busy. We're busy in our section for sure. Well, that was a great overview. Any questions from the committee? Well, thank you for having us in. We appreciate it. Thank you for the overview this morning. We as well. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. I think we have a break until the ones that were on the floor. Any questions from the committee and anything that we have?