Innovative team put eye in sky to aid flood relief effort

RECONNAISSANCE missions look a bit different during flood relief operations, as the 3rd Combat Engineer Regiment discovered earlier this year, when floodwaters inundated Townsville homes.

Joint Task Force 658 – North Queensland Flood Assist, commanded by 3rd Brigade Commander Brigadier Scott Winter, was officially stood up on February 2 with 2800 personnel directly involved with the response.

3CER put an eye in the sky to see where the troops were most needed.

Team leader Sergeant Travis Fennell said the 3CER reconnaissance section launched its unmanned aerial systems (UAS) to gather information about the worst-affected areas.

“You could tell which houses had been heavily flooded and which ones just had water in the yard,” Sgt Fennell said.

“You could see the watermark halfway up the wall and you could tell the whole bottom floor was ruined.

“Rather than having soldiers drive up and down streets looking for highpriority areas, we were able to take images from the UAS and focus 3 Brigade’s efforts based on that.”

From Bluewater in the north to Giru in the south, 3CER UAS operators immediately responded to the floods and spent four days collecting imagery to assess the situation.

In addition to finding flood-damaged properties and areas isolated by floodwaters, the team also took images of structures under threat.

“Council wanted to do a structural assessment of some of the bridges that had been inundated, so we launched the UAS to take a look,” Sgt Fennell said.

“The water was flowing quite fast and there was no other way to get under the bridges, but we were able to get close to the water and get a picture of what was going on.”

The use of UAS for disaster relief is an example of the innovation with emerging capabilities encouraged across the army, with events such as the Game of Drones competition launched in August and the celebration of Science Week, also this month.