Kenya Red Cross gathers multispectral drone data to help manage the worst locust invasion in 70 years
This year, climate conditions in East Africa and Southwest Asia have transformed an insect that’s usually a quiet, solitary grasshopper into an overwhelming invasion of desert locusts. This surreal phenomenon happens sometimes in these parts of the world; however, this year is particularly intense. Typical locust swarms include tens of billions of flying insects and can span from less than 1 mi2 (2.6 km2) to 100 mi2 (260 km2). This year, in Northern Kenya, one swarm was reported to be 24 times the size of Paris.
The locusts migrate and devour any crops in their way. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said this year’s invasion could threaten food security for 10 percent of the world’s population. Kenya has been hit particularly bad. So the FAO contracted the Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS) to survey affected areas with the WingtraOne, and they were able to provide vital data on affected areas across seven counties, in one week.
- Disaster damage assessment
- Kenya
WingtraOne offered high-resolution aerial imagery to complement other measures of damages so far. FAO also needed to see if control measures like insecticides were working. So this data capture mission looked at efficacy and impact.
Safia Verjee
Innovations Manager, KRCS
A lesson from the locusts: VTOL flight is efficient
According to the contract with the FAO, the KRCS had a month to procure data for 16 counties. With this tight deadline and pandemic restrictions on travel, the team chose seven counties to fly over.
“The idea with this data is to show areas that were affected so decisions could be made about how to go forward with recovery efforts,” Verjee said. “FAO can also correlate observations back to areas that were sprayed to see effects, because we got feedback from the communities that birds were dying and the livestock seemed unwell due to the spraying.”
Each flight—with Wingtra’s MicaSense RedEdge-MX payload—covered between 60 and 70 ha (150 and 170 ac) in around 30 to 40 minutes. KRCS combined the multispectral drone data with information from interviews and direct observation. They relied on RGB, NDVI and advanced vegetation index layer map outputs to extract vital information.
So when we looked at the migration route of the locusts, it seemed like these were the counties that were badly affected. And they were close enough to each other that it was logistically possible with WingtraOne given the short timeline and travel restrictions during lockdown.
Safia Verjee
Innovations Manager, KRCS
The right equipment at the right time
The last time such an invasion happened in this part of the world, tools to mitigate it barely existed. This time around, agencies scramble to develop strategies with whatever technology is available and on-hand. KRCS had luckily upgraded their drone survey technology to WingtraOne just several months before the invasion.
“We tried to run a survey mission with a Mavic Pro in a refugee camp, in Dadaab,” explained Taariq Twaha, head of ICT at KRCS. “That was much more difficult [than using WingtraOne] because it’s not a large-scale mapping drone. It was slower, lots of battery changes, and then managing the data and processing it was challenging. I think we had like 10,000 images, too.”
