DJI has announced the new Qualified Entities Programme (QEP) for their public safety clients across Europe. QEP will remove geofencing (NFZ and GEO Zones). It also removes altitude restrictions for all enterprise drones used by public safety organisations. These services include police, fire services, also, search & rescue, civil defence/protection, border/customs control and the coastal guard.
The unlock is for an unlimited amount of time, however, the altitude and geofencing unlock will only be valid in the country of authorised jurisdiction. Currently, the QEP program will be supporting the DJI M200, M210 and M210 RTK, alongside any future enterprise drone releases by DJI. The first step of this new program rollout will be for public safety organisations only and will be of huge benefit.
For your information: Organisations that aren’t using one of DJI’s enterprise drones will have to apply for exemptions as normal.
How will this benefit public safety services?
The program is set to minimize operational restrictions for public safety partners that have been pre-verified. This update will allow users to fly in sensitive locations and at higher altitudes. This enables critical operations such as disaster response, firefighting, search and rescue, as well as other public safety applications.
The Qualified Entities Programme is particularly key for response teams such as the police. It will allow them to span larger areas from a higher perspective in the sky. This ultimately over time will allow emergency services to perform more efficiently, therefore largely improving response times to major incidents.
Updates like this are only likely to boost the drone economy and will see more and more emergency service organisations turn to drones to perform basic and more complex operations.
How do I access the Qualified Entities Programme?
There is an application process to access QEP. National, regional, and local public safety agencies and entities must submit documentation and go through an application process with DJI. Get in touch with COPTRZ via the web form below. We can register your interest with DJI, and help you to unlock QEP.
This new update shows DJI’s continued commitment to enabling public safety services to benefit from the rapidly advancing drone technology. This will hugely benefit the public safety services moving forwards, therefore in the future is also likely to be life-saving and cost-cutting.
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