Quantitative Data Analysis: CRASAR Small Unmanned Aerial
Systems at Hurricane Harvey
Odair Fernandes1, Robin Murphy1, Justin Adams2, and David Merrick3
Abstract— This paper summarizes the 112* flights by nine
models of small unmanned aerial systems at Hurricane Harvey
and presents four recommendations for further research and
development. This was the sixth reported deployment of sUAS
for a hurricane or flooding disaster by public officials during
the immediate response and recovery phases. This deployment
is particularly interesting because it was the largest number of
flights up to that time, was conducted by a county government
that already had sUAS and a sUAS policy, had a suite of 14
models of sUAS to choose from, and used sUAS for four
different mission types. This paper analyzes the quantitative
data from the flights in terms of missions, objectives, choice of
sUAS, choice of control style, manpower, flight duration,
operations tempo, and data products. The data is also
considered by phase, showing that First Person View was used
exclusively for the preparedness and response phases (the first
8 days) and preprogrammed mapping flights were requested
only during the infrastructure recovery phase. In addition to
the findings, the paper makes four recommendations for
additional research. The Harvey datasets are available to the
scientific community for further analysis.
I. INTRODUCTION
Hurricane Harvey is estimated to be the second most
costly Hurricane in the history of the United States. The
majority of that damage stemmed from its second landfall in
the Houston area over August 27-28, 2018, which flooded
Harris and Fort Bend counties. On August 25, The Fort Bend
County Office of Emergency Management (FBCOEM)
requested the assistance of the Center for Robot-Assisted
Search and Rescue (CRASAR). On August 26, CRASAR
provided two types of robots. One was an Hydronalix
EMILY marine surface vehicle carrying a side scan sonar to
attempt to estimate the volume of water in key rivers and
streams. This was not successful. The other was a fleet of
small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS), which were
successfully used from August 26 through September 4 when
the infrastructure recovery phase ended and citizens were
allowed to return home. The flights satisfied all mission
requests from FBCOEM incident command, which formally
This work was supported in part by the NSF grant 1762137.
1
Odair Fernandes and Robin Murphy are with the Department of
Computer Science and Engineering, Texas A&M University, College
Station, Texas 77843, USA odair_fernandes@tamu.edu,
murphy@cse.tamu.edu
2
Justin Adams is with CRASAR, College Station, Texas 77843, USA
jadams@crasar.org
3
David Merrick is with Florida State University, 644 Bellamy, Main
Campus, dmerrick@em.fsu.edu
*Includes the aborted sortie on August 29th
managed all air asset requests and allocated either manned or
unmanned assets.
This paper discusses only the portion of the quantitative
data collected and analyzed for small UAS at Harvey. It does
not cover the equally important ethnographic data collected
about crewing and airspace management. This paper will be
organized as follows: first, related work in Sec. II, followed
by overview of the hurricane in Sec. III. Second, mission
types and sUAS usage in Sec. IV. Then, platforms in Sec. V.
Sec. VI presents the preparedness and response phase
recommendations and concludes the paper.
II. RELATED WORK
Hurricane Harvey is the sixth known deployment of
sUAS for a federally declared hurricane or flooding disaster
by public officials in the US during the immediate response
and recovery phases. Note, the immediate response and
recovery phases are different than humanitarian recovery;
the missions focus on the public good in terms of life safety,
mitigation of hazards, and restoration of critical
infrastructure. CRASAR has responded with small UAS to
two prior hurricanes: Katrina (2005, State of Florida
Emergency Response Team)[1] and Wilma (2005, Fort
Myers Harbor)[2]. It has responded to four other flooding
events: the Oso Mudslides (2014, Snohomish County Office
of Emergency Management)[3, 4], Texas Memorial Day
Floods (2015, Wemberly County Office of Emergency
Management)[4], Louisiana April Floods (2016, Tangipahoa
and Washington Parishes Office of Emergency
Management)[5], and Texas 2015 Floods (2015, Fort Bend
County Office of Emergency Management).
Numerous other volunteer teams deployed small UAS
to Texas for Harvey and the metro-Houston region but had
not deployed at the request of an agency with incident
command authority. Volunteer flights were stopped in Harris
County due to violations of Texas privacy laws and in Fort
Bend County due to violations of the Temporary Flight
Restriction. Note that Fort Bend County had obtained
sufficient resources with CRASAR and did not need self-
deployed assets.
Small UAS were also used two weeks later by the State of
Florida for the Hurricane Irma disaster in Florida. The
damage from that hurricane was primarily due to wind with
little flooding or storm surge. CRASAR also participated in
the Hurricane Irma response and recovery.
III. OVERVIEW OF HURRICANE HARVEY
The CRASAR team was deployed to Fort Bend County
from August 25 to September 4, therefore they used the
following Response Timeline: Before (August 25-26),
Incident (August 27-28), Response (August 29 – September
1), and Recovery (September 2-4). Although, the hurricane
Harvey hit the Houston area on August 27-28, the first
CRASAR flight for the Fort Bend County Office of
Emergency Management (FBCOEM) was on August 26
(Before or Preparedness Phase).
There were 112* flights (sorties) for 56* mission
objectives and targets. All flights generally composed of a 2-
3 people team (CRASAR pilot team and a County expert). In
total, there were 10 pilots that served as pilot in command
(PIC), 3 backup pilots (not PIC), and 2 data managers from
Florida State, Kovar Associates LLC, Lone Star UASC,
Texas A&M, and USAA.
Although there were 14 different UAS models available,
only 9 models were used due to the personal choice of the
PIC. These were Air Robot 200 (AR200), DJI Mavic Pro,
DJI M600 Pro, DJI Phantom 4 Pro, Insitu Scan Eagle, Intel
Falcon 8, Parrot Disco, PrecisionHawk Lancaster 5, and 3DR
Solo. In addition, the Air Robot 180, DJI Inspire, DJI
Phantom 3 Pro, Precision Hawk M100, and UAUSA
Tempest as well as thermal and multispectral packages
complete the 14 different models available. Therefore, the
pilots were not forced to use any particular platform, on the
contrary, they had a large variety of UAS well equipped to
choose from.
This CRASAR UAS deployment provided innumerous
benefits to the county rescue teams. It not only allowed the
rescue operations to be conducted faster, but also more
efficiently and safer. The ability to use these small UAS also
allowed to get ahead in the damage and debris assessment,
which enabled a faster restore of services, contract cleanup,
and overall faster economy recovery. In addition, this
deployment permitted monitorization of critical
infrastructures under flood load, positive economic impact
from opening bridges sooner, and planning support from data
that showed the river level. The UAS videos recorded helped
to deter citizens from trying to re-enter neighborhoods
flooded and filled with sewage. Finally, it is very important
to mention that it helped establish a broad county government
and citizen support of the use of sUAS.
The FBCOEM Harvey data is useful for first responders
for multiple reasons. One is that it was a record setting
number of flights and diversity of missions for all ESFs over
suburban and rural areas. In addition, the flights occurred
before, during incident, and then through the response as well
as recovery phases. To note that, the pilots had access to a
wide variety of fixed-wing platforms (Parrot Disco, Scan
Eagle, and PrecisionHawk Lancaster 5) and rotorcrafts
platforms (AR200, DJI Mavic Pro, DJI M600 Pro, DJI
Phantom 4 Pro, Intel Falcon 8, and 3DR Solo). Last but not
least, it is important to mention that all requests for air
resources went through FBCOEM, which already was
knowledgeable about sUAS, owned drones, had used drones
in 2 prior federally declared disaster floods, had thought
about manpower, and already had a drone policy in place.
All in all, the missions, the use of external pilots, the
OEM manpower allocation, and a choice on platforms were
informed decisions and the positive results were by planning
and design, not by luck.
IV. MISSION TYPES AND SUAS USAGE
This section discusses the 7 basic mission types that are
performed in natural disasters. In addition, it describes the 4
mission types executed in Hurricane Harvey deployment
along with their respective primary objectives.
There is an online class called Small Unmanned Aerial
Systems for Emergency Managers where the instructors go
over the 7 general mission types that have appeared and
documented in the use of small UAS around the world since
2005. To note that each of these types have different flying
style, data products, post-processes, and set of expectations.
Fig. 1 shows the mission types generally used in the different
types of natural disasters. These 7 basic mission types are the
following:
1. Strategic Situation Awareness (SA), Survey, and
Reconnaissance: It consists of multi-purpose scan of
the area. It could be either Remote Presence or
Mapping. In the case of Remote Presence, video and
stills are taken, otherwise, if Mapping, 360 views of
area (images à master ortho) are taken and does not
have to be geo-referenced. This mission type will
typically use pre-programmed flights and
photogrammetrics.
2. Detailed or Structural Inspection: Examining built
structures for more than general awareness, which are
often viewpoint dependent and require more elevation
views than plane views. This type of mission is
generally performed 10 feet (3.048 meters) away from
the structure due to poor GPS signal, wind shear, for
the fact that some DJI platforms have (large) obstacle
avoidance mechanisms. In this case, it is better to have
an expert on the team in FPV to re-direct as needed.
3. Ground Search: Generally, it is a search for a
missing person, object, or scene that is on the ground.
For this mission type, high resolution images (not
video) are needed, thermal may not be a silver bullet,
but must be geotagged. In addition, the altitude and
Field of View (FOV) are required.
4. Water Search: Used in marine incident (though may
be combined with ground search in a boating accident
on a lake). It requires high resolution images (not
video) and thermal essential and may be the most
reliable means to find a survivor in water. As in
Ground Search, it must be geotagged and the altitude
and FOV are also required.
5. Debris, flood estimation, and damage: It is more
detailed than general recon and more focused on
documented boundaries of event, counting houses,
relating current view to prior condition. Consider
fixed-wing platforms or manned assets.
6. Tactical Situation Awareness: This mission type
helps the rescue team asses the condition of roads or
bridges ahead and decide where to go from their
current location. sUAS provides on demand SA when
a team needs.
 7. Delivery: Facilitate delivery of material to any
location. Generally, only used in flooding situation.
The ad hoc delivery is dangerous.
Figure 1. Mission Types vs. Natural Disasters
Four of the seven mission types were requested by
FBCOEM:
1. Debris/Damage/Flood Estimation: In this mission
type there was the classic need to map the affected
areas and a lot more visual assessment where the
experts were looking to see the current state in
order to assess it very quickly. In addition, they
assessed the tornado impact.
2. Inspection: Inspections were performed mainly by
looking at bridges, buildings, levees, and dams.
3. Strategic SA/Recon/Survey Mapping: This type
of mission is used for public information. For
instance, the county judge used the sUAS
information in the daily reports to explain to the
citizens why the evacuation orders were still in
place.
4. Tactical SA: This mission was executed not only
for overwatch by the teams that were going to
neighborhoods to prepare, but also to help rescue
people and for route or transportation survey in
order to ease help get the responders to the right
locations.
Fig. 2 shows these 4 mission types performed at Harvey,
with the specific objectives that required real-time expertise
(mission specialist) in bold. Some of these missions require a
specialist because there are aspects that a regular sUAS pilot
can do. For instance, in Visual Assessment objective type, it
was crucial to have an expert that knew the map of the area
and what to look for specifically (landmark). This gives the
ability to compare the current state of the area to how it
looked before the disaster. The same thing goes for bridge
and building inspection and rout or transportation survey.
Figure 2. Mission Types and Specific Objectives
Fig. 3 shows the number of mission by mission type by
day and the respective response phase (before, incident,
response, and recovery phases). In the beginning (before
phase), there was only debris/damage/flood estimation as
well as during and after the incident, then it starts moving to
Inspection, with a little bit of Strategic and Tactical SA. Note
that the evacuation order started on August 26th and started to
be released around September 1st and 2nd. In addition, note
that there is a big gap from August 27th to 30th due to the
heavy rain and clouds in the area, which made flying very
difficult.
Figure 3. Number of Missions by Mission Types vs Day
It is also important to state the importance of the real-time
experts in these missions. Their knowledge helps speed up
the response process since the they know the affected areas
very well. In addition, when compared with the UAV pilots,
the experts know exactly what to look for and inspect in
natural disasters like this. Therefore, although the pilots have
the experience of flying in different disasters, it is important
to have a local expert in the team in order to facilitate the
response and make real-time decisions. As observed in Fig. 3,
the first 7 days needed real-time experts (the missions were
mainly debris/damage/flood estimation – visual assessment,
Inspection – bridge and building inspections, and Tactical
SA – route and transportation survey), then back-in-the-
office experts and no experts (Strategic SA) since the
missions were more focused on mapping, public information,
and inspection of levees or dams. Note that only public
information missions were general (for situation awareness),
the other were very specific and focused.
The number one mission type used was Inspection (64
sorties), followed by debris/damage/flood estimation (39
sorties), then Strategic SA (5 sorties), and finally Tactical SA
(4 sorties). Table I shows more in detail the number of sorties
for each mission type and respective primary objective.
Concerning the Inspection mission type, the Levee or Dam
primary objective had a larger number of sorties due to
mapping missions where there were many flights and images.
However, bridge inspection was mainly to know the state of
the river because of the transportation going into the Fort
Bend suburban county. For debris/damage/flood estimation,
visual assessment was very important, in particular for the
ability to look into the flood inundation maps and checking
the status of the area. Finally, there were a few sorties for
Strategic and Tactical SA.
TABLE I. SORTIES BY MISSION TYPE
 * Includes the aborted sortie

V. PLATFORMS
FBCOEM used 9 different UAS models in the Hurricane
Harvey deployment and these were chosen personally by the
PIC. These were the Air Robot 200 (AR200), DJI Mavic Pro,
DJI M600 Pro, DJI Phantom 4 Pro, Insitu Scan Eagle, Intel
Falcon 8, Parrot Disco, PrecisionHawk Lancaster 5, and 3DR
Solo. Note that the Scan Eagle is a bit bigger than the other
platforms, providing a bigger area coverage, higher altitudes,
and hours in air. The other 8 platforms (120 m AGL or less)
have a smaller area of coverage, lower altitudes, and 0.5-1.5 Figure 5. Platform Type vs Day
hours in air.
Fig. 4 shows the number of flights flown by each
platform by day and with the respective response phases. The
DJI Mavic Pro was by far the preferred UAS to use with a
total of 78 of 112 sorties. In addition, the little $1000 DJI
Mavic Pro was used in every mission type and for every data
product (images, videos, and map making).
One interesting point about the platforms is that rotorcraft
platforms (AR200, Falcon 8, M600 Pro, Mavic, Phantom 4,
and Solo) were the exclusive platform type used in the first 3 Figure 6. Control Type vs Day
phases (before, during the incident, and response) of the
deployment. The fixed-wing platforms (Disco, Lancaster 5, As mentioned earlier, FPV and rotorcraft flights were
and Scan Eagle) were not used until September 2, even preferred during the response time with an average sortie
though they were available at all times. Fig. 5 shows the time of 8min:58sec and an average mission time of
usage of each platform type by day. Another remarkable 13min:52sec (average of 1.2 sorties per mission).
aspect was the fact that all the rotorcraft flights in the first 3 Unfortunately, some flight times were not consistently
phases were flown in FPV even tough PP controls and
recorded, so they were estimated by means timestamp of the
mapping were available. Therefore, it was all about the
experts wanting to make the decisions in real time, so FPV first and last data product taken. In addition, these
was used until the recovery operations requested mapping. estimations made the average time off by approximately 2-3
Fig. 6 shows the relationship between control type and day. minutes for take-off and landing, pushing it up to
All in all, the FPV and the rotorcraft were preferred during approximately 12-minute average sortie time. Therefore, it is
the response because the experts needed the sUAS for rapid safe to say that the platforms do not have to be in the air for
decision making (not for mapping), need of short flights due more than 15 minutes or stay in the station for 1.5 hours.
to “I will know it when I see it” purposeful perception, the Based on the average sortie time, the sorties are fast, short,
operations tempo are intense that spending extra 20 minutes and to the point. Unfortunately, it is not possible to rate the
for mapping is not time effective, the ability to hover and flight times since the data for the average area covered by
watch the video in order to estimate flow rates, extremely each flight was not collected, but all flights were within the
limited landing zones, generally 60 meters AGL, and visual line of sight. Table II shows the average sortie times
orthomosaics are large capacity files, which makes it hard to (known, estimated, and know + estimated sortie times) by
email or transfer. day for rotorcraft using FPV control. In addition, having the
experts also helped on the op-tempo because they would be
precise on what needs to be recorded, capturing less than
75% of the sortie. The experts not only were helpful when
the pilots needed to record the sorties, but their knowledge
of the area also helped to reach the different mission
locations, which would take 2-4 hours in the 32 Km radius
area that had to be analyzed. Fig. 7 shows the location of the
56 missions deployed in the Houston area.

TABLE II. AVERAGE SORTIE TIME BY DAY

Figure 4. Platform vs Day


Figure 7. The 56 Mission Locations in the Houston Area
One aspect to consider when talking about the large
areas that need to be analyzed is the wireless streaming.
Fortunately, most of the wireless infrastructure of the area
was intact, so there was no problem with the
communication. However, it is important to know that if
streaming is needed, this would be the kind of coverage the
wireless network would have to support.
There were 3 types of data products (images, videos, and
orthomosaics) generated in the flights since they were
crucial for experts to make the necessary rapid decisions.
Tables III and IV shows the number pictures and videos
taken in each type of mission and primary objective. Based
on the tables, there were mainly pictures (getting still image
of how things were before the hurricane hit) in the Before
Phase, pictures and videos (get the natural viewpoints of
what’s going on in the affected areas) for the Response
Phase, and mapping (get the master images and work over
longer distances) for the Recovery Phase. Approximately,
150GB of data was generated by the missions with 85GB
belonging to the DJI Mavic Pro. Since there was a large
quantity of data generated, it is important to have dedicated
data managers to handle this work because the GIS branch
or manager will not be able to absorb extra work. In the
Hurricane Harvey deployment there were dedicated data
managers to handle the backups, renaming files, annotating,
transferring to agency, editing, snipping, uploading,
monitoring, and download mapping. Therefore, keep in
mind that data handling will impact manpower.
TABLE III. NUMBER OF PICTURES FOR MISSION TYPE BY DAY
TABLE IV. NUMBER OF VIDEOS FOR MISSION TYPE BY DAY
VI. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Based on the data presented above, there are four
recommendations for robotics developers to consider in
optimizing the use of sUAS for hurricanes and flood events.
The data indicates that First Person View (FPV) control
is essential for the initial life saving and disaster mitigation
phase of an event rather than mapping. Therefore, sUAS
should always provide FPV.
Related to the First Person View (FPV) control finding,
incorporation of experts is critical for the response phase.
Response is all about the expert seeing at a distance; the use
of sUAS is not a reduction in manpower or substitution, it is
an amplifier and accelerator. As a result the pilot may not be
the expert. However, the expert may have to be co-located
with the pilot because high bandwidth wireless streaming
over a 32 km radius is unlikely. Therefore the human-robot
interaction between the pilot-expert and specialized
interfaces for expert, such as [6], are needed.
The data showed that inexpensive rotorcraft platforms
were able to conduct all missions and with flight durations
on the order of 12 minutes. The safety constraints of
maintaining visual line of sight in densely trafficked
airspaces suggest that beyond visual line of sight will be
rare. Therefore, research for flooding applications should
not focus on creating long endurance platforms but rather
on the data management.
The 112 flights produced over 150GB of data products,
with a daily average of 3.10GB. The CRASAR team had a
person devoted to data management and still could not keep
up with maintaining chain of custody, backups, archiving,
and curation. Therefore, research into the informatics
associated with the unmanned systems is warranted.
The Harvey datasets are available to the scientific
community for further analysis at <http://hrail.crasar.org>.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The CRASAR deployment was all volunteer and the
analysis was supported in part by a grant from the National
Science Foundation 1762137. The authors would like to thank the Fort
Bend County Office of Emergency Management, especially Jeff Braun,
Lachlan Mullen, and Adam Wright.
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