Using drones to monitor environmental emergencies offers a range of advantages that make them highly effective tools in disaster response and environmental protection. They can be launched quickly and reach affected areas faster than ground teams, can access areas that are difficult or dangerous for humans, and keep emergency personnel out of harm's way during assessment phases and are far less expensive to operate and maintain than crewed aircraft and reduce the need for large response teams in the field. In addition, drones can transmit real-time footage to responders for quicker decision-making. The **R**esilience and **E**mergency **S**ervices **C**oordination **U**sing **E**nabled-drones (RESCUE) project will deliver a Somerset-based environmental monitoring and resilience service using drones. It brings together Somerset Council, local emergency services, resilience teams, and Government agencies, plus the CAA, and drone service providers, to develop a MVP for adoption as a sustainable service in Somerset. This project is important to the Somerset region as it has a history of flooding, causing damage and impact on the local economy and lives. In 2014, Somerset suffered unprecedented flooding. Whole villages were completely marooned, and hundreds of people had their homes swamped. The economic cost of the floods to Somerset was up to £147.5 million, with the South West region significantly affected. The Council estimated that the cost of flood damage exceeded £10 million. More than 14000 hectares of agricultural land, used for grazing and crops, were underwater for 4 weeks. The floods affected over 600 houses and 17000 acres of agricultural land. The damage to residential properties amounted to £16 million. This was not a one-off event, another very wet winter in 2024 saw record rainfall in one of the lowest-lying areas of the UK, the Somerset Levels and Moors. Project RESCUE will develop a business case for the use of drones to collect data and intelligence during environmental emergencies in Somerset. This will include the environmental, social, and economic implications of flooding across the county, identifying drone-based solutions to support emergency response, and identify the economic growth opportunities the adoption of drone technologies and supporting services will have on the region. The project will develop a concept of operations for how drones would be operated in such emergencies in the county, integrated into rescue and monitoring operations, and how the data collected would be shared amongst agencies, and explore service provision solutions to meet the requirements.

The oceans sector has a wide-ranging need for remote sensing capability. Uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAV) or drones can provide important monitoring, surveying, and data collection across many of the competition themes; specifically, alternative energy, aquaculture systems, seaweed cultivation and production, carbon capture and storage, and environmental monitoring. The technical challenges of limited flight time and range of existing net-zero drones, and the size/weight/power of beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) detect/avoid systems are holding back potential market growth. The proposed project is a collaboration of a Canadian industry lead, a Canadian end-user collaborator, and a Canadian post-secondary institute partnering with 1 UK industry lead, and 3 UK academic organisations (linked to end-users) that represent a wide range of the supply chain. The challenge and market opportunity behind the project is to develop and implement long-endurance zero-emissions beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) drone technology in the Ocean sector using Limosaero's long-endurance solar drone and Canadian UAVs networked BVLOS ground radar system. The project will also work with the existing (Canada-Inuit Nunangat-United Kingdom Arctic Research Programme) CINUK projects, to further enable their work on climate driven changes in terrestrial, coastal, and near-shore marine environments in Inuit Nunangat, as well as the impacts on Inuit and community health and well-being.

Limosaero is a micro-SME developing a low-altitude, long-endurance, sub 25 kg, solar-powered UAV. The prototype of the UAV has been successfully test-flown. To do so, this project aims to address three key areas: manufacturing readiness, IP development and protection, and operational costs of customer testing and validation. Limosaero will work with composite experts, the National Composite Centre to create a manufacturing roadmap that will facilitate the transition from prototype development to volume production. Limosaero will engage IP specialists to conduct an IP audit and assess freedom to operate. Finally, the project allocates resources towards addressing the operational costs associated with customer testing and validation to conduct professional and impactful trials that showcase the technology's capabilities to potential customers, accelerating Limosaero towards commercial revenue generation.

Limosaero, the lead organisation, in collaboration with the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (UKCEH), proposes an innovative ammonia measuring tool using a solar-powered unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Using a low-altitude solar UAV to carry miniaturised ammonia sensors, a flexible and innovative solution for collecting uninterrupted long time series datasets. Tools to monitor ammonia pollution at source, and at boundaries of sensitive ecosystems, are necessary to evidence the effectiveness of interventions, inform regulatory policy, improve national/global emissions inventories, and support decision-making for farmers, environmental consultants, environmental charities, and government. Informed decisions on where to invest, the technologies to deploy, and what regulation to enact, prevents and reduces emissions in many powerful indirect ways as it supports the growth and uptake of validated control measures. This project will ground-test, integrate, flight test, and analyse the sensors identified in phase 1 in a variety of representative environments like poultry farms, cow sheds and sensitive woodlands.

Limosaero's project will use a novel sensor package, in development with the University of Cambridge, and deploy it using a long-endurance solar-powered uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV).

Limosaero is developing long-endurance solar and battery powered UAVs capable of a multiday endurance with zero emissions. The success of the GGR land intervention demonstrators relies on reliable monitoring of escaping greenhouse gases including CO2, CH­4 ­­and N2O, over both large areas and long-durations. Continuous data sampling in single locations can be achieved with fixed measurement stations, and existing electric UAV's can-do surveys over small-areas for <2hr periods; however, Limosaero's solar powered platform can provide a step-change in the temporal and spatial data quality. Additionally, beyond the scope of the GGR demonstrator projects, long-endurance aerial gas monitoring has wider applications, for instance monitoring methane release from landfill sites, ensuring emissions from shipping lanes meet the required regulatory standards, and monitoring refineries and gas wells for gas leaks.

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) both within the UK and internationally is a rapidly growing industry. As we emerge from the COVID pandemic, UAVs represent a significant growth industry in the UK economy and present an opportunity to reduce the CO2 emissions of industries reliant on aircraft for their operations. Many small low-altitude UAVs (<20kg) are battery powered with fixed-wing and quadcopter configurations commonly limited to less than an hour flight time, this restricts the application of UAVs to wider markets. Limosaero's low-altitude long-endurance solar powered UAV will significantly extend flight time, operate without carbon emissions and therefore present an opportunity to grow the UAV industry and help deliver on the government's net zero ambition. The use of our product by our customers will directly offset CO2 by providing a zero-emission alternative to traditional fuel powered flights (e.g. tasks typically completed using traditional small manned-aircraft and helicopters).