Monday, April 14, 2025

​​​​​​​ONRSR Top Guns In Demand

ONRSR’s Chief Remote Pilot, Chris Canning and Senior Remote Pilot, Andy Vinden answered a call from Victoria’s energy safety regulator, Energy Safe Victoria (ESV), to demonstrate the drone’s capabilities, and in the process help them with a sizeable problem.

ONRSR is using drones operationally for investigation and compliance purposes – specifically to provide 3D modelling and mapping of incident scenes.

ONRSR’s National Manager of Investigations, Laura McCurdy said the drone is an integral regulatory tool in the regulator’s armoury and is used to give investigators a bird’s eye view of incident scenes.

“This technology gives us the capability to obtain high resolution aerial and ground-based imagery and to accurately survey and measure rail incidents,” she said.

“It is an invaluable tool for us and has opened up new avenues for investigation and analysis that are critical to being able to understand an incident, what caused it and ultimately how we can prevent recurrences.”

“Over the last few years it has been deployed to a range of major incident sites around the country, from the far west of New South Wales and into the Northern Territory. The drone has also been used to scale incident scenes across metropolitan areas.”

The use of the drone enhances the investigator’s ability to collect quality evidence for analysis in support of the overall investigation process and ONRSR’s regulatory function – and now it has caught the eye of other safety authorities.

ESV approached ONRSR earlier this year to assist with information and advice in relation to RPAS capability and obtaining a remotely piloted aircraft operator’s certificate (ReOC) from the Civil Aviation Safety Authority for conducting commercial drone operations. ESV then asked if ONRSR’s pilots could attend a wind farm in Berrybank, Victoria, where a wind turbine had failed and collapsed.

The location provided the perfect opportunity to showcase the ONRSR drone’s full range of functionality and why it has become an integral tool for the national investigations team. In conducting the drone mission, the pilots created a 3D model of the site (using photogrammetry), a 2D map (integrated into Google Earth) and took a range of aerial photography and videography. They also conducted a subsequent flight over a non-operational wind turbine to demonstrate the drone’s inspection capabilities.

The ONRSR pilots then attended at ESV offices in Melbourne the following day to present the outputs to senior management and its investigation and compliance teams, while also providing further guidance about how to go about obtaining the operator’s certificate, the software/hardware requirements and training and civil aviation legislative compliance.

While ESV initiated the collaboration to gather insights from ONRSR, the activity was also a valuable opportunity for ONRSR to learn from another regulator and to showcase our team’s expertise.

ESV is now progressing its RPAS capability while the ONRSR drone continues to help the investigations team take its own infield activities to new heights.