New Heights, New Uses, and New Questions: Can Individuals Enforce Their Property Rights Against the Impending Rise of Low-Flying Civilian Drones?

By 2020, there will be at least seven million civilian drones flying in the low-altitude airspace above the United States. Civilian drones include unmanned aerial vehicles operated by both private individuals for recreational and business entities for commercial purposes. While this budding technology has the potential to be a positive influence on society as a whole, civilian drone regulation at both the state and federal level lags behind growing drone usage across the country. As of now, the Federal Aviation Administration has administered a small rule that provides some regulation on the use of civilian drones. Many questions remain, however, as to the property rights that landowners on the ground have against drones and their operators flying in the low-altitude airspace above their property. This Note examines the common law torts of trespass and nuisance and analyzes how both doctrines would apply to a drone flying low above an individual’s land. Furthermore, this Note argues that the federal government is best suited to regulate civilian drones used for commercial purposes, whereas individual states should regulate the use of drones by private individuals

Understanding consumer demand for new transport technologies and services, and implications for the future of mobility

The transport sector is witnessing unprecedented levels of disruption. Privately owned cars that operate on internal combustion engines have been the dominant modes of passenger transport for much of the last century. However, recent advances in transport technologies and services, such as the development of autonomous vehicles, the emergence of shared mobility services, and the commercialization of alternative fuel vehicle technologies, promise to revolutionise how humans travel. The implications are profound: some have predicted the end of private car dependent Western societies, others have portended greater suburbanization than has ever been observed before. If transport systems are to fulfil current and future needs of different subpopulations, and satisfy short and long-term societal objectives, it is imperative that we comprehend the many factors that shape individual behaviour. This chapter introduces the technologies and services most likely to disrupt prevailing practices in the transport sector. We review past studies that have examined current and future demand for these new technologies and services, and their likely short and long-term impacts on extant mobility patterns. We conclude with a summary of what these new technologies and services might mean for the future of mobility.Comment: 15 pages, 0 figures, book chapte

Grasshoppers and Crickets

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The Feasibility of Counting Songbirds Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Obtaining unbiased survey data for vocal bird species is inherently challenging due to observer biases, habitat coverage biases, and logistical constraints. We propose that combining bioacoustic monitoring with unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology could reduce some of these biases and allow bird surveys to be conducted in less accessible areas. We tested the feasibility of the UAV approach to songbird surveys using a low-cost quadcopter with a simple, lightweight recorder suspended 8 m below the vehicle. In a field experiment using playback of bird recordings, we found that small variations in UAV altitude (it hovered at 28, 48, and 68 m) didn\u27t have a significant effect on detections by the recorder attached to the UAV, and we found that the detection radius of our equipment was comparable with detection radii of standard point counts. We then field tested our equipment, comparing songbird detections from our UAV-mounted recorder with standard point-count data from 51 count stations. We found that the number of birds per point on UAV counts was comparable with standard counts for most species, but there were significant underestimates for some—specifically, issues of song masking for a species with a low-frequency song, the Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura); and underestimation of the abundance of a species that was found in very high densities, the Gray Catbird (Dumetella carolinensis). Species richness was lower on UAV counts (mean = 5.6 species point−1) than on standard counts (8.3 species point−1), but only slightly lower than on standard counts if nonaudible detections are omitted (6.5 species point−1). Excessive UAV noise is a major hurdle to using UAVs for bioacoustic monitoring, but we are optimistic that technological innovations to reduce motor and rotor noise will significantly reduce this issue. We conclude that UAV-based bioacoustic monitoring holds great promise, and we urge other researchers to consider further experimentation to refine techniques

Protecting Homeowners\u27 Privacy Rights in the Age of Drones: The Role of Community Associations

Homeowners\u27 notions of privacy in their dwellings and surroundings are under attack from the threat of pervasive surveillance by small civilian drones equipped with highly sophisticated visual and data-gathering capabilities. Streamlined rules recently issued by the Federal Aviation Administration ( FAA\u27) have unleashed technological innovation that promises great societal benefits. However, the new rules expose homeowners to unwanted snooping because they lack limits on the distance drones may operate from residential dwellings or time of operations. Indeed, our society should not expect a federal agency to deal effectively with the widely diverse issues of drone technology facing the states, given the different needs of urban and rural communities. The FAA wisely anticipates adopting a multi-layered regulatory framework to address privacy issues. State and local governments, by contrast, are lagging far behind in regulatory efforts, and Fourth Amendment jurisprudence has not kept pace with the privacy issues raised by drones operating in residential areas. Municipalities are best prepared to craft reasonable limitations to safeguard their residents, but few are doing so at the neighborhood level. Fortunately, the sixty-eight million homeowners living in condominium and homeowner associations and cooperatives ( community associations\u27)may look to such quasi-governmental organizations for nimble and responsive action where they live. Community associations have authority and powers similar to municipalities and constitute the level of government closest to homeowners. This Article demonstrates that community associations, home to twenty percent of America\u27s homeowners, constitute the level of government most familiar with characteristics of their neighborhoods and are the best positioned entities for safeguarding the privacy expectations of their homeowners as society adjusts to the uncertain and accelerating world of drone technology

The Ground Was Always in Play

Without the people from Pakistan’s Tribal Areas to narrate the visual evidence, one wouldn’t necessarily know what one was looking at in the photos or videos of the aftermath of drone attacks. To tell their stories, they had moved through a territory pockmarked by bombs and checkpoints and drones and troops and fighters, but to those sitting in Islamabad or New York or London, these things signified that the territory was “wild” and its people therefore probably faithless. The doubt was unequally distributed, and the judgment was always made against the backdrop of a relentless distrust. A bitter pill: they endured the containment zone, but their experiences of it rendered the testimonies of their experiences unstable. As they were made mute, the forensic experts were called in to make objects speak

The Cowl - v.80 - n.8 - Nov 5, 2015

The Cowl - student newspaper of Providence College. Volume 80 - No. 8 - November 5, 2015. 24 pages