Archives for July 2018

A handful of Albuquerque property owners who have allowed their vacant commercial properties to deteriorate into eyesores received a wake-up call and a warning to clean up their neglected buildings within the next two months or face the consequences. And it’s about time.
Mayor Tim Keller and other city officials delivered the warnings – in the form of bright red signs declaring each of the eyesores a “substandard building” – on Tuesday.
“We are taking back our community one block at a time, and it’s starting right here at this intersection,” Keller said while tagging a building at Juan Tabo and Central
The warnings are being issued in City Council districts 6 and 9 as part of a pilot program approved by the council last year. The program will be reviewed in two years to determine whether it had the desired outcome and should be expanded to cover other parts of the city.
District 6 is Albuquerque’s Southeast Heights, encompassing the University of New Mexico, Nob Hill and the International District. District 9 covers the far Southeast Heights and Foothills.
As of last Tuesday, 30 dilapidated commercial structures have been identified in the two districts. The owners of tagged properties have 60 days to remediate their property. If they fail to do so, the city attorney has the authority to file a complaint in district court. Under the ordinance, owners of dilapidated properties also must pay $500 to register with the Planning Department. The ordinance also calls for $300,000 to be set aside by the city and used to secure or demolish neglected structures.
Harris said the ordinance is needed because without it, it’s difficult to address properties that are in bad shape but not to the point of being declared nuisance properties, which means being used for criminal activities.
Kudos to the city for tackling this problem head on and trying to improve neighborhoods that have been plagued by these eyesores for years. While we all should respect the rights of property owners, those owners must also be held accountable when their run-down properties begin affecting their neighbors. They, too, have a responsibility to the neighborhoods they’re in.
That said, the city should work with these owners to make these vacant properties productive once more, and that includes minimizing red tape when an owner wants to spruce up or finds an alternate use for the property. And city officials should study the pitfalls that plagued the Safe City Strike Force during previous administrations and take steps to ensure they don’t end up repeating those same mistakes, which resulted in a class-action lawsuit.
By: Albuquerque Journal Editorial Board (ABQ Journal)
Click here to view source article.

Starting this summer, solar-powered drones from New Mexico will soar above raging wildland blazes to offer a critical eye in the sky to firefighters battling flames below.

The drones, made by Albuquerque-based Silent Falcon UAS Technologies, are part of a fleet of unmanned aerial systems being deployed for the first time this year under a new U.S. Department of Interior contract for air support companies to dispatch commercial drones as needed to wildfires in all 50 U.S. states. One of those companies, Montana-based Bridger Aerospace, subcontracted Silent Falcon to deploy its solar-powered drones whenever the feds call for assistance.
Until now, government agencies permitted only small, helicopter-like drones, or hovercraft, to fly near fires. The Silent Falcon, however, is a winged plane built to fly long distances for hours on end, providing detailed, real-time imaging of everything in a broad swath of area below. It’s equipped with infrared cameras and other sensors that allow it to operate in adverse conditions, enabling it to see through smoke from wildfires and identify hot spots.

Federal authorization to use such unmanned systems marks a new milestone in the emerging commercial drone industry, said Silent Falcon CEO John Brown. Although the government still maintains tight restrictions on operations in civilian airspace, it’s slowly opening the skies to more exploratory uses while the Federal Aviation Administration works on the rules and regulations needed to safely allow drones to fly unencumbered over urban and rural areas.
That, in turn, is encouraging industry to test a huge range of commercial uses, from aerial inspection of remote infrastructure and industrial operations to mapping and surveying of real estate and construction sites.
“We’ve seen a sea change in the market, starting last year and picking up even more this year,” Brown said. “Companies and government agencies are seeing broad commercial applications for unmanned aerial systems, and it’s creating huge demand for services.”
George Bye of Bye Aerospace Inc. in Colorado, which helped launch Silent Falcon in 2010, said a “cultural change” in attitude is driving commercial markets forward.
“A few years ago, drones were a pioneering concept that elicited interest with skepticism, but that’s entirely gone away,” Bye said. “The use of robotic planes is now fully accepted. It’s phenomenal how fast it’s changed.”
A critical turning point came in August 2016, when the FAA approved the first-ever rules and regulations for limited use of civilian drones in domestic skies. Under the FAA’s “Part 107” restrictions, licensed operators can now fly small aircraft of under 55 pounds up to 400 feet in the air, although only during daytime. Ground controllers must keep all craft within their line of sight and avoid flying over people.

That cracked the door open for the first time for hobbyists, commercial operators and government agencies to begin flying drones, generating a flood of activity. To date, about 120,000 “pilots” have received drone operating licenses under Part 107. And over 1 million unmanned systems are now registered with the FAA – more than all manned aircraft registered nationwide.
“Overnight it created a very sizable service industry for vertical flights to inspect small areas and infrastructure with multi-rotor drones,” Brown said. “Unmanned systems are now an ubiquitous part of all surveying and mapping operations of everything from power lines and pipelines to oil and gas operations, construction sites and real estate.”
The Teal Group, a Virginia-based aerospace and defense analysis firm, estimates the civilian and military drone markets reached $3 billion in the U.S. last year and will grow to $8.7 billion by 2026. Worldwide, market value hit $7 billion and will grow to $22 billion by 2026, said Teal Group Director of Corporate Analysis Philip Finnegan.
“The market is just beginning,” Finnegan said. “It’s still a nascent industry.”
The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International in Washington, D.C. estimates more than 100,000 domestic UAS-related jobs will emerge in the next few years.
“We sifted through information provided in all Part 107 operator applications, and found four dozen types of UAS businesses,” said AUVSI spokesman Tom McMahon. “Apart from more than 100,000 pilots licensed, there’s all the support personnel and commercial services needed for operations.”

In New Mexico, at least a dozen companies have emerged from participants in DroneU, an Albuquerque-based school that offers in-person and online courses about drones while preparing pilots for Part 107 license exams. Commercial activities include aerial photography, real estate videography, and land reclamation and mining-remediation surveys, said DroneU founder and Chief Technology Officer Paul Aitken.
“We train about 1,100 pilots a month on average nationwide,” Aitken said. “About 75 percent of them are people focused on business who want to turn their passion into a profit.”
Many companies and government agencies are also training their own personnel to incorporate drones into operations.
“All the federal agencies, like Fish and Wildlife and the Army Corps of Engineers, are actively researching how they can use drones to get their jobs done,” said University of New Mexico geography and environmental studies professor Chris Lippitt.
Lippitt is a co-founder of Albuquerque-based IBEX Aegis, which developed a software platform to turn drone imagery into high-tech reports that magnify and illuminate intricate details. The company, which launched last year, employs five now and expects to grow to 10 or 12 by next year, said co-founder and CEO Jesse Sprague.
“Our UAS partners collect imagery that we upload to our software,” Sprague said. “They need that to leverage the data provided. We mine the data for imagery and maps.”
Another Albuquerque company, Robotic Skies, has established an international network of repair and service centers where drones fly in like manned aircraft, said President and CEO Brad Hayden. The company received a first round of venture seed funding last year from the Kickstart Seed Fund in Utah and Sun Mountain Capital in Santa Fe.
“We have a global network of 150 independently-owned and operated service stations in 35 countries,” Hayden said.

For Silent Falcon, wildfire work is just the tip of the iceberg. Later this summer, it will begin aerial inspections of some 2,600 wells for an oil company.
“We’re excited about where things are going,” Brown said. “Industry use of drones is only just beginning, and we’re setting ourselves up to be at the forefront as it emerges.”
By: Kevin Robinson-Avila (ABQ Journal)
Click here to view source article.

CARW is pleased to announce the selection of Tracy Johnson as the new CARW President & CEO; Tracy will start her new post May 12, 2014.  Previously Tracy served as the Executive Director of TEMPO Milwaukee.  Tracy replaces Jim Villa who is leaving to take a position in the UW System.

Read more about it in the Milwaukee Business Journal.