From mid-July, Alcossebre’s beaches will be guarded by drones

Five Alcala-Alcossebre Local Police officers have finished their training to be able to pilot the council’s drones and use them to control capacity and that social distancing rules are being complied with on the municipality’s beaches.  Following the officers’ training, authorisation to start the flights has to be obtained from AENA, which it is expected will be expedited in the next few weeks.  It is forecasted therefore that the flights could start in mid-July.  With cameras installed on the drones, it will be possible to control capacity on the beaches and to see clearly whether there is any non-compliance with safe distancing.  Also, megaphones are incorporated in the equipment to be able to broadcast warnings to people and to ask them to comply with anti-COVID-19 measures currently in force.

“We think that the use of these new technologies can turn out to be very useful to control the capacity and take timely measures rapidly should there be any problem”, Mayor Francisco Juan explained.  “The Council had already acquired the devices last year and this year in January we approved the internal regulation for their use.  The officers’ training was carried out as soon as lock-down allowed it and we hope they can start being used shortly”.

Within the local regulations for drones, as well as the control of beaches, other forecast uses are the control of exploitations of agriculture and cattle exploitation, irrigation wells, geographical features such as river beds, ravines and the river San Miguel flow, as well as areas with important heritage wealth.  Other planned uses for the drones are to provide safety measures in the control of burning unauthorised prunings and, above all, their use as a deterrent flying over fruit and vegetable growing areas, particularly during harvest time, to prevent robberies.