There is growing interest in the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as a low-cost data collection and survey-mapping instrument. A guidance note was published by the World Bank and Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team to document the best uses of UAVs in collecting geospatial data in Pacific Island States, such as the requisite capacity building, safety training, and preparation that need to be taken into consideration. This guidance note is intended to be used by local technological agencies of Pacific island states that are looking to integrate UAV usage into their data collection workflow.
The UAV4Resilience – Utilizing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Disaster Risk Assessments in the Pacific Islands project was launched in 2017 to develop the abilities of Fiji and Tonga to carry out disaster and climate risk assessments, and to identify post-disaster damage.