Gone is the bullhorn. Instead, New York City emergency management officials have turned high-tech, using drones to warn residents about potential threatening weather.
With a buzzing sound in the background, a drone equipped with a loudspeaker flies over homes warning people who live in basement or ground-floor apartments about impending heavy rains.
“Be prepared to leave your location,” said the voice from the sky in footage released Tuesday by the city’s emergency management agency. “If flooding occurs, do not hesitate.”
“A new life awaits you in the off-world colonies - the chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure.”
Is the existing emergency alert system not sufficient? It already activates TV, radio, and cell phones.
Not to mention, what’s wrong with plain old sirens on poles? I refuse to believe that drones are somehow cheaper to buy/operate/maintain.
what’s wrong with plain old sirens on poles?
No cameras on them and they don’t normalize the idea of police drones buzzing around your neighborhood.
That is a very good point.
In Dallas, our sirens don’t mean tornado; they mean go indoors to avoid large hail or high winds. It’s crazy confusing for people who don’t know, go hide in their bathrooms, and then get pissed off when there’s no tornado. An alternate/backup method would be good (voice or different siren?) but I’m not sure a drone can tolerate a severe weather situation.
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My tinfoil hat theory is that Drones are far better at mass surveillance than current emergency alert systems, so while the advantage over the existing emergency alert system is probably negligible - it opens the door for people accepting having drones everywhere and constantly overhead which is the real goal.
For a second layer of tinfoil, having a strong drone presence (production, infrastructure, technology) in the economy seems like it will be very useful for future wars. Whoever has the largest and smartest swarm wins
For slightly less tinfoil haberdashery, it could be used to more rapidly locate people during a weather disaster, identify what areas are most heavily impacted in real-time, and redirect emergency services in case of, say, debris blocking a road.
This is of course assuming it’s not the cheapest shit the highest bidder offers (which it probably will be) that disintegrates during a light rain.
No. You need the government flying machines outside your window to let you know about your freedoms.
We can assume an amount of people in NYC that have no access to any of those.
It’s not a bad supplement to existing systems.
We’re really bringing the most dystopian science fiction to life, aren’t we? Does art imitate life or…?
Warning people that are in danger from incoming dangerous weather seems like a good idea to me. We need to stop fucking up the climate to reduce the amount of dangerous weather, yes, but it’s sensible to protect people from it until we do that (and of course, even if we never did anything to change the climate, sometimes it would still be dangerous)
I think the worry here is that if they are already using drones to monitor weather, what else are they using drones to monitor?
I don’t live anywhere near NYC, but I do know Adams was a cop, so I wouldn’t trust him to just use city drones for helpful reasons.
Drones have been banned in the city for years. Iirc the city uses anti-drone drones occasionally, but I’ve literally never seen one overhead, be it personal, commercial, or governmental.
Do you trust Adams enough that you think he’ll care if his own government defies that ban if he feels it’s necessary?
No, but the point is if I see a drone I know it’s a government drone and not just some hobbyist. The ban already doesn’t apply to the government, hence the weather warning drones and anti-drone drones.
I was talking about government ones to begin with.
I’m sure the storm awareness drones flying in storm weather will never cause any issues.
Why? Were sharpies not working?
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https://apnews.com/article/new-york-drones-weather-01ab1c02ea79c7131abe9978380671c1
