Federal government funds BioConsult SHs new drone project "APIS"

Husum,

A research centre for civilian drone applications will be developed on a former military airfield In Leck in North Frisia.

Six people stand next to each other, three of them holding a flight drone in their hands.

© M. Nehmer

From left: WSG Managing Director Matthias Hüppauff, District Administrator Florian Lorenzen, our colleague Anna Kersten, Prof. Stefan Hußmann from the FH Westküste University of Applied Sciences and the project managers of the Nordfriesland Economic Development Corporation, Jens Heitmann and Jan-Christian Mahrt

The project receives eight million Euros funding by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

BioConsult SH is one of 70 partners of this project. BioConsult SH already uses drones in various projects.

“Use of drones in ecological monitoring is incredibly promising because we are able to cover relatively large areas at a high spatial resolution. We believe that drones can very well close the gap between aerial surveys and time-consuming on-site inspections to count marine and coastal birds, to measure grey and harbour seals or to map mussel beds and seagrass meadows,” says Anna Kersten of our drone project group.

“So far we can only assume that drones cause relatively minor disturbances for wildlife but now want to find out systematically based on robust data.” This is what the APIS (Aerial Photogrammetric Integrative Surveys) project, which now financed by funds of the UAM-InnoRegion-SH, seeks to achieve.

Please refer to our project site for further information about our resaerch project and to the press release of UAM-InnoRegion-SH for further information about the joint research project (in German).