Conceptual Approach of Measuring the Professional and Economic Effectiveness of Drone Applications Supporting Forest fire Management

Introduction: Since the operation of manned aircraft at forest fires is expensive, in many cases managers miss the aerial reconnaissance however that would be required for the effective intervention. Drones can give real alternatives against traditional reconnaissance, therefore it is important to study both professional and economic effectiveness of its applications. Methods: Authors used three different approaches to study the effectiveness of drone applications; firstly they used comparison based analysis, then an analysis of indirect way and at last a damage - time function analysis, based on the drone applications at the tactical level. Research used their own experiences in this field, practical experiments, economic analysis and also expert estimation. Results and discussion: The meaning of efficiency for fire managers can be different from the meaning of efficiency for economists. Economic efficiency is more strict than technical effectiveness. Even if drone applications are cheaper than the manned aircraft, it is helpful to analyze its real economic effectiveness. This study points at principle mistakes used often by marketing to overrate the advantages of some product or procedure. Even if it is very difficult to calculate with all circumstances and assumptions found during firefighting process such as aerial patrol for detecting hot spots or fly for reconnaissance but authors show methods that can help us to rate the economic effectiveness more precisely than rated nowadays by the marketing.