Drones could be Baltimore’s newest tool for housing development
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The city is on a mission to create more livable housing options and green spaces in the city.
The city of Baltimore wants to take property management to new heights with drone technology.
In a citywide push to revitalize local neighborhoods, the Baltimore City Department of Housing and Community Development’s Bird’s Eye View — or BEV — program would use unmanned aerial systems to collect data that will assist with property inspections, documentation, planning and other redevelopment activities, city officials said in an announcement last week.
“The main purpose of the program is to increase workplace safety, collect more and better data and create better place-based models that increase neighborhood vibrancy," James Turner, special project manager at DHCD, said in an email to Route Fifty.
The BEV program will help advance the city’s larger neighborhood revitalization effort, called the Reframe Baltimore Vacancy Reduction Initiative, he said. The initiative launched in 2023 under Mayor Brandon Scott with the goal of investing $3 billion over 15 years to repair vacant properties or safely convert them into public green spaces.
DHCD will use three Parrot ANAFI UKR drones that can assist with and enhance manual evaluations, improving operational efficiency and worker safety, Turner said, adding that “final procurement steps are still taking place.”
Once approved, three drones will be shared among several divisions within DHCD to fulfill different revitalization use cases. For instance, DHCD’s land management unit can use drone-enabled data to model and map vacant housing or land plots to be reviewed by the redevelopment strategy team, Turner explained.
The construction and demolition division and the building inspections division will leverage the devices to evaluate buildings for structural damage and document progress toward property stabilization. Additionally, the departments’ special investigation unit can leverage drone imagery to monitor illegal dumping sites that are hard to reach or hazardous for human personnel.
The use of drones in the public sector has proliferated as state and local agencies increasingly recognize the tech’s ability to enhance public safety operations, natural disaster response and transportation.
At the state level, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation has been leveraging drones for infrastructure management and improvement efforts since 2018. The same year, MassDOT launched the Aeronautics Drone Operations Program with drones supporting the inspections of bridges, state buildings and roads.
In Sacramento, California, city officials enlisted drones to support an initiative launched last year that aims to streamline the housing construction and development process. Under the initiative, drones assist city staff with inspections by offering greater visibility and efficiency when reviewing properties.
Such use cases can help governments save on time and costs, but Baltimore officials recognize that the use of drones by city agencies “must balance privacy against the need for public safety and data collection,” according to the BEV program’s draft policy document.
As a privacy and security measure, DHCD’s drone use will be limited to public and city-owned property, and officials will notify community members when the devices will be in use, Turner said. Property owners’ consent will also be required for DHCD to conduct drone-assisted inspections on private sites.