Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS)

Transport Department (TD) uses UAS for traffic monitoring and traffic survey purpose. In the case of traffic monitoring, UAS would supplement the CCTVs and traffic detectors installed along strategic roads and enable TD to obtain real-time area-wide traffic conditions for efficient handling of traffic incidents. For traffic surveys, TD uses video analytics software to extract traffic volumes, vehicle types and other information from the videos taken by the UAS. Such information is necessary for TD to assess the traffic conditions of road and junctions and to formulate traffic improvement schemes.
 

In using the UAS, we emphasize on safety and protection of privacy. For safety, we follow the guidelines of the Civil Aviation Department's General Safety Guidelines for Flying UAS. The key measures to protect privacy are:
 

• Video shooting will not start until the UAS has reached a height of at least 30m above ground (The resolution of the camera in the UAS operating at the above minimum height will not be sufficient for recognition of human faces and car plate numbers);
   
• Videos streaming will be encrypted before transmission to TD to prevent interception by other parties;
   
• No video will be recorded for traffic monitoring. Videos taken for traffic survey purposes will be erased according to our data retention policy; and
   
• The UAS will be labeled with our departmental logo, and a notice of the UAS operation will be displayed at the launch site.