In the home medical equipment (HME) industry today, data management is used to improve all parts of a provider’s business. Data is used to improve marketing campaigns and optimize business operations, thereby increasing revenue, efficiencies and bottom-line profit. Managing data correctly is essential in compliance matters to protect privacy and avoid breaches, a burgeoning issue in all businesses. While data management is a general term, for HME providers the notion of using data for revenue and operations makes it the essence of a healthy and successful company.
Data Management for Internal Control
As stated above, data management allows HME providers to make well-informed business decisions and run day-to-day operations more efficiently, reducing expenses. For example, using data to track and manage denials will not only bring in more bottom-line cash, but data can also be used to train staff about their mistakes. This will improve the order intake process—where errors are typically made—and will ultimately streamline the operational flow to hasten the order-to-cash process. Specifically, if you find that more than 10% to 12% of claims are denied, you should drill down into the data to determine the root cause of those denials. Avert denials by filtering the reason for denial and focusing on staff retooling and retraining. Additionally, use your software to stop people from perpetuating the errors.
Continue reading: https://www.homecaremag.com/october-2021/data-management-impact-on-bottom-line

ALBANY — A new partnership between the Griffiss International Airport-based Northeast UAS Airspace Integration Research Alliance, Inc. (NUAIR) and the state Thruway Authority will use drones to inspect bridges, pavement and other tracts of the Thruway for future repairs.
Officials said using drones will cut back on the need for a wide range of manual equipment, from scaffolding and lifts to even binoculars.
“Using drone technology to inspect bridges, overpasses and infrastructure along our entire system is an imaginable game-changer,” said Thruway Authority Executive Director Matthew J. Driscoll in a release. 
“Drones can provide views of hard-to-reach locations quickly and safely. This pilot program aligns with the Thruway’s vision of maximizing technological innovation and continuing to improve infrastructure for the future.”
Continue reading: https://romesentinel.com/stories/thruway-to-use-drones-for-bridge-roadway-inspections,122675

The Columbia County Sheriff’s Office (CCSO) is adding to its list of available field options by launching a new program called Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems.
Commonly referred to as a Drone, the program will launch in the coming weeks, according to a release from the CCSO. The drones will be operated by trained deputies in situations where other means or resources are not available, or are less effective. The drones will eventually used by search and rescue teams as well.
“As technologies evolve and become more commonplace, we evaluate what is or is not appropriate for use in our community,” Sheriff Brian Pixley said. “We believe drones are a great tool in the field, whether for enforcement, search and rescue, or other authorized purposes.”
A drone provides the operator a remote, wide, birds-eye view of a scene, a perspective previously not generally available to deputies. It allows first responders to make more informed decisions at a scene while reducing risk.
Continue reading: https://www.thechronicleonline.com/news/new-tool-sheriffs-office-to-use-drones/article_0ff289dc-26c9-11ec-8185-2fbf277ad9b1.html

Drones are becoming commonplace as more industries begin to understand the value that they can drive. Not only can they save companies money but drones also enable improved safety and enhance the efficiency of their operations. As the drone industry has grown over the last few years and the technology has evolved, the use of drones for work has multiplied, as have the number of use cases.
Drones are a powerful tool for remote data collection, and in reality, they can collect any kind of data that we perceive as long as there is a drone-compatible sensor that exists for the collection of that type of data. Current industries include Agriculture, Chemicals, Environmental conservation, Construction, Mining, Delivery/Transportation, Oil & Gas, and Public Safety, to name a few.
The primary types of data that is currently being collected by drones include:

• Visual data - The most common types of data. A drone is used to fly over an area or an object of interest to see what otherwise might not be visible and collect a record of what the camera sees.

• Thermal data/Infrared - Sensors enable drone operators to see temperature data, allowing them to collect radiometric data across vast areas and difficult-to-reach places. Ideal for firefighters to identify hotspots to tackle in a fire.

• Multispectral data - This is data collected by sensors that measure reflected energy within specific electromagnetic spectrum bands.

• Hyperspectral data - Sensors measure energy in a more focused way with multiple bands instead of a singular band used in measuring Multispectral data.

Continue reading: https://www.iotevolutionworld.com/iot/articles/450205-microdrones-announce-presentation-introduce-drone-that-collect-longer.htm

Australia’s tech industry is booming, with the sector expected to add 60,000 jobs by 2025 and the potential to grow the economy by $10billion. Demand for skills is skyrocketing and as a result, competition for talent is fierce. But HR leaders in the sector have an added challenge on their hands - diversity.
The industry remains male-dominated for a multitude of factors, some of which – like a lack of STEM education – begin before the workplace. But women in tech are also more likely to experience unconscious bias, sexual harassment and discrimination which all contribute to the industry’s gender inequality.
To get a better understanding of how HR leaders are tackling the issue, HRD spoke to Simone Shugg, chief people officer at Australian tech firm Nearmap, who said the industry’s good intention is not yet translating into positive change.
Continue reading: https://www.hcamag.com/au/specialisation/diversity-inclusion/nearmap-cpo-on-the-power-of-data-to-close-australias-gender-pay-gap/312411

The topic of cloud has disseminated across enterprises and stakeholders interested in digital transformation. Organizations looking up the technical term may find it difficult to grasp at first with emerging varieties and applications of the cloud. And now, there’s fog and edge computing that are new to the boardroom, and part of important business discussions everywhere.
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Is edge computing key to 5G infrastructure?
Here’s a really quick guide for CXOs to explain what cloud, fog, and edge computing really are, and why they’re suddenly so important to enterprises. We’ll dive into fog and edge computing and then circle back to cloud computing to compare the three.
Lifting the fog on fog computing
Fog computing is simply a way for companies to decentralize their computation and analytical power in order to make their “connected” ecosystems more efficient.
“Fog provides the missing link for what data needs to be pushed to the cloud, and what can be analyzed locally, at the edge,” said Purdue University’s College of Engineering Dean Mung Chiang.
Given the rising importance of fog computing to the age of industrial automation and autonomous transportation, a new organization called The OpenFog Consortium has been created to help make fog computing easier. “Fog computing is a system-level horizontal architecture that distributes resources and services of computing, storage, control and networking anywhere along the continuum from Cloud to Things,” according to the Consortium.
In essence, as a result of fog computing, companies are able to use the computing power on nodes — between devices that collect or generate data and the official enterprise cloud platform — to quickly generate insights and make decisions that matter.
Closing in on edge computing
Edge computing, in many ways, is easier to understand than fog computing. It essentially means that all computing happens on the device itself, and only important is related back to the enterprise cloud (maybe via the fog).
Let’s take autonomous cars as an example to understand edge computing. When autonomous cars are accepted by consumers and used commonly, there will be plenty of cars on the road. For all of them to send data to the cloud and wait for a response in order to take action is quite impractical.
Although 5G will make wireless communications much more efficient and powerful, they’ll still be unable to cater to the demands of the world’s autonomous cars. Hence, the car itself needs to be able to compute and make decisions based on the data it gathers.
Continue reading: https://techhq.com/2021/10/shedding-light-on-fog-cloud-and-edge-computing-for-cxos/

It is increasingly clear that we are in a climate transition whose impact will have direct consequences for the planet if corrective actions are not deployed. In this context, the European Green Deal has set multiple initiatives to make Europe climate neutral in 2050.
The way to achieve these objectives is, on the one hand, regulatory since fiscal and pricing policies will have to be modified, and specific industries will need to be provided with incentives and financing to transition to a new energy system. On the other hand and equally important is an investment in technology. There is a need for investment in R&D in new technologies that will help transform the production into a more decarbonized, more distributed, and more digital.
Why Is Everyone Talking About Edge Computing And How Is It Being Applied In The Electrical Sector?
In this context, we can witness the electricity grid being immersed in this process of disruptive transformation. Some of the requirements that are driving this change are:

• The need to integrate new sources such as electric vehicles or heat pumps
• The need to generate and store energy in a distributed manner. We are no longer talking about consumers, but prosumers (producers and consumers) who can group together in energy communities.
• Regulatory or commercial requirements to provide more and better information to users, regulators and other agents
• The need for distributors, marketers and other actors in the value chain to generate new services that build customer loyalty in an increasingly competitive environment.

With all these requirements, the future electrical grid will need to manage multidirectional energy that demands real-time information between the utility, its suppliers, partners, and customers.
Continue reading: https://www.iotforall.com/edge-computing-use-case-in-the-electricity-sector

Women have made great inroads into the tech world in recent years, but there remains a long way to go before we reach a truly equitable state of affairs in workforce numbers, remuneration and product development. An edtech startup called Entity Academy — which provides women with training, in areas like data science and software development; mentoring; and ultimately job coaching — has raised $100 million on the heels of strong growth of its business, and an ambition to improve that ratio.
The financing will be used to help students finance their Entity Academy tuition, which typically costs $15,000. It’s coming from Leif, itself a startup that provides financing services to edtech platforms so that they can offer their students income share agreements (otherwise known as ISAs, arrangements where students are not required to pay back tuition loans until they find jobs).
Jennifer Schwab, the founder and CEO of Entity, has built the business since 2016 on virtually no outside funding, but said that this latest financing is a precursor to the company working on its first, more traditional VC-led equity round.
Continue reading: https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/07/entity-academy-edtech/

Going into graduate school, Victoria Muller Ewald said she never thought she could learn to code, let alone consider it would one day be integral to her research. Now, she’s involved in initiatives that encourage students from middle school to graduate school, women in particular, to code.
Currently a second-year postdoctoral fellow in the Iowa Neuroscience Specialty Program in Research Education, Muller Ewald said she studies the cerebellum and credits coding as an essential skill in the process.
“I went from studying the front side of the brain in animal models to studying the backside of the brain in humans — very different,” she said. “And the one thing that bridges the gap is that I know how to code.”
Muller Ewald said her current initiatives — like her upcoming coding boot camp through the UI’s neuroscience graduate club Hacky Hour, and her upcoming project for high schoolers within the national organization Girls Who Code — are a response to the lack of coding classes she had access to as a neuroscience graduate student.
Continue reading: https://dailyiowan.com/2021/10/06/ui-neuroscientist-empowers-women-to-code/

The world is becoming smaller, and global IoT use cases are becoming increasingly standard. Fortune Business Insights projects the global IoT market to reach $1.5 billion by 2027, exhibiting a CAGR of 24.9% during the forecast period. A key driver for growth is the entire IoT ecosystem has evolved to enable global deployments due to increased efficiency and reduced cost. 
These deployments allow IoT builders to get information to and from the device and solve problems that are affecting our physical world. There are a growing number of use cases that take advantage of IoT in ways never before available, such as enabling a delivery robot to navigate to its destination or tracking endangered species in conservation areas to help fend off poachers.
Connectivity is the critical fabric that enables the IoT. According to a recent IDC InfoBrief detailing results from a survey of over 1,000 IoT decision-makers, 66% of respondents with international deployments are utilizing multiple mobile carriers.  
Streamlining connectivity management has been a major challenge in the past.  Prior to cellular IoT connectivity platforms being built for use across the globe, manufacturers needed to seek out and negotiate usage with multiple regional network partners. As you can imagine, this created a frustrating process and resulted in a solution that often was only viable in a very limited market. 
Now, with the help of global provider platforms, IoT device manufacturers can scale into new markets with a lower investment and cross borders when they’re ready. Let’s explore each component needed for cellular IoT deployments and how they have matured to provide connectivity across the entire globe.
Hardware
Some traditional modems used to only work on a single carrier, which meant that they would only work in a specific country. We saw this specifically with older 2G or 3G installations. If a company utilized a SIM that only works in Venezuela and hardware that only works in North America, it unsurprisingly would not work. This situation created SKU complexity in that you would need to have hardware and SIMs that worked in both, requiring multiple SIM SKUs and hardware SKUs that would need to be mixed and matched, causing a ballooning catalog to be managed.
Now, we’re seeing an increasing number of modems being built for global deployment. With global hardware becoming the standard, modems can be deployed across borders without the hassle that comes with mixing and matching multiple carriers. The proliferation of 4G-LTE and new cellular network options specifically built for IoT, such as LTE Cat-M (also known as LTE-M), further encourages the development of hardware that is deployable across the globe.   
Continue reading: https://www.toolbox.com/tech/iot/guest-article/how-iot-as-a-service-platform-can-transform-industries/

Applications are now open for the Second International Drone Show Competition, created by Riga, Latvia-based SPH Engineering. The competition is open to drone show designers and engineers from all over the world and incorporates six categories:  •    Best drone show 3D animation •    Best drone show (up to 100 drones) •    Best drone show (100 – 1000 drones) •    Best drone show (1000+ drones) •    Best integrated drone show •    Best drone show business promo video Winners will receive a diploma and prizes specific to each category including a MacBook Pro 13, a DJI FPV drone, and educational and marketing support. Applications must be received by November 30 and the winners will be announced on December 21, 2021.
Live Design talked with SPH Engineering’s Chief Technology Officer, Alexey Dobrovolskiy, about the goals behind the competition and the future of drones in entertainment.  Live Design: SPH Engineering produces Drone Show Software, but designers do not need to use your product to enter the competition.  Why did you take this approach? Alexey Dobrovolskiy: As you know, SPH Engineering is a multiproduct drone software company and Drone Show Software, which celebrates its fifth anniversary this year, is just one of our product lines. Our goal with the competition is to form a global drone show community, not be exclusive.
LD: Tell us a little about the evolution of DSS.
AD: The very first version of UgCS, our core product, allowed different users to connect to the system from multiple devices and control flights. This did not appeal to customers for a few years until we got an email query from a US company that checked to see if our software could manage a number of drones making various figures in the sky. We explained the strengths and limitations of our existing software and agreed that we would adjust it to our client’s needs. Paul Creasy from Full Spectrum https://fullspecllc.com/ was our first drone show client. For a few years he arranged drone shows in an amusement park near Atlanta . 
That version was complicated and could only manage about 20 drones. One of my engineers believed we had to create a brand new software. To persuade me, he did not talk to me for a couple of weeks and then presented a demo of how a new solution would work. That was a great fresh view!  It eventually became the prototype for Drone Show Software which can manage hundreds of drones. The solution attracted many more customers who use DSS for their event needs. Today, our software can support shows of over a thousand drones. 
Continue reading: https://www.livedesignonline.com/lighting/international-drone-show-competition-aims-build-community-create-standards

Alphabet Inc.’s drone subsidiary, Wing, is experimenting with launching its aircraft from the roof of an Australia mall only steps from the stores providing goods for delivery.
Wing LLC has made more than 2,500 deliveries from a mall in Logan City to nearby neighborhoods located south of Brisbane, the company said in a press release Wednesday. The test is being done in partnership with Vicinity Centres, which operates shopping malls across Australia. 
“For the first time, we are co-locating our drones with businesses at their premises, rather than local businesses having to co-locate their goods with us at our delivery facility,” Jesse Suskin, Wing’s head of policy and community affairs in Australia, said in the release. 
The experiment is an attempt to bring the company’s drone-delivery model closer in line with how small businesses normally operate. So far in its Australia pilot program at the Grand Plaza mall in Logan, Wing has been working with businesses selling sushi, juice and tea-based drinks. A pharmacy is also starting to sell over-the-counter medicine and other items, the company said. 
While it’s too soon to know whether such an arrangement could bolster sagging brick-and-mortar stores, Vicinity views the partnership as a way to expand its business, Justin Mills, the company’s innovation and information officer, said.   
Continue reading: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-06/mall-retailers-get-boost-from-alphabet-drones-delivering-sushi?srnd=technology-vp

The European Commission announced first-of-its-kind legislation regulating the use of artificial intelligence in April. This unleashed criticism that the regulations could slow AI innovation, hamstringing Europe in its competition with the U.S. and China for leadership in AI.
For example, Andrew McAfee wrote an article titled “EU proposals to regulate AI are only going to hinder innovation.”
Anticipating this criticism and mindful of the example of GDPR, where Europe’s thought-leadership position didn’t necessarily translate into data-related innovation, the EC has tried to address AI innovation directly by publishing a new Coordinated Plan on AI.
Released in conjunction with the proposed regulations, the plan is full of initiatives intended to help the EU become a leader in AI technology. So will the combination of regulation and pro-innovation policies be enough to spur accelerating AI leadership?
Continue reading: https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/06/driving-ai-innovation-in-tandem-with-regulation/

Over the last couple of years, the long-standing promise of artificial intelligence (AI) started to bear fruit for companies across many industries. Companies that have adopted AI have begun seeing how it can help them get valuable insights from massive data sets and automate processes for increased efficiency. AI also aids businesses to become agile, innovative and scalable.
All of these benefits have always been important but have become crucial for many companies ever since the Covid-19 pandemic first hit. Now companies that don’t have the necessary agility, innovation and scalability often struggle to overcome the challenges in this new landscape. So it’s fairly logical to think that companies will increase their investments in AI. In fact, a recent IDC Spending Guide projects that AI investments will increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.1% in the 2019-2024 period.
That estimate doesn’t paint the whole picture, though. That’s because businesses might throw more money to new AI in the near future, but that doesn’t guarantee they’ll get a significant return on investment (ROI). While obviously necessary, economic investment isn’t the only essential aspect of successful AI implementation. There’s also the need for a sound AI implementation strategy to guide the whole process.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2021/10/06/how-to-identify-ai-opportunities/?sh=b96bca57405a

Diego Alvarado believes it’s vital that society understands the role artificial intelligence plays in everything we do.
“Everybody is calling it the new electricity,” said Alvarado, an instructional assistant professor at the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering at the University of Florida. “It’s under the hood of almost everything. We need to be able to understand it.”
It’s not because he envisions AI replacing humans in jobs. It’s because he, like many in his field, believes that workers will have to work in unison with AI in their jobs of the future.
To help bring AI to the masses, Alvarado teaches UF’s AI Fundamentals course, where students learn the history and types of AI, and different methods of machine learning and its uses. The goal of the course is for students to become informed users of AI tools.
Continue reading: https://news.ufl.edu/2021/10/uf-professor-says-everyone-needs-to-understand-ai/

Corporate governance of AI doesn’t sound like a sexy topic, but it’s rapidly becoming one of the most important challenges for big companies that rely on machine learning models to deliver value for their customers. More and more, they’re expected to develop and implement governance strategies to reduce the incidence of bias, and increase the transparency of their AI systems and development processes. Those expectations have historically come from consumers, but governments are starting impose hard requirements, too.
So for today’s episode, I spoke to Anthony Habayeb, founder and CEO of Monitaur, a startup focused on helping businesses anticipate and comply with new and upcoming AI regulations and governance requirements. Anthony’s been watching the world of AI regulation very closely over the last several years, and was kind enough to share his insights on the current state of play and future direction of the field.
Here were some of my favorite take-homes from the conversation:
Continue reading: https://towardsdatascience.com/the-present-and-future-of-ai-regulation-afb889a562b7

The key to better decision making is data. Effective leaders rely on data to make informed decisions and drive meaningful outcomes for their organizations. However, the process of unlocking data-driven insights is no small feat.
Data doesn’t belong to individual departments—it’s an asset that benefits the entire organization. Advanced analytics requires the ability to access, manage, and combine data that’s stored in silos across the organization. As a result, multiple data formats and governance controls limit the accessibility and shareability of valuable information.
Making better decisions means unifying data in a secure and well-governed way. Business leaders need to break down data silos, making all data securely available for analysis, regardless of where it lives in the organization.
To make the most of data, organizations also need tools that empower individuals across the organization to interpret and analyze data, converting information into insights that transform decision-making.
Continue reading: 
https://www.forbes.com/sites/amazonwebservices/2021/10/05/unlocking-the-power-of-data-making-better-business-decisions/?sh=479d93ac59dd

When Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram went down unexpectedly, people and businesses were also unable to access their smart devices.
The outage, which was due to configuration changes on the backbone routers that coordinate network traffic between Facebook’s data centers, lasted for almost six hours on Monday 4 October.
It was also reported on Twitter that Facebook employees were unable to enter buildings because of IoT enabled entry points:
Continue reading: https://www.twinfm.com/article/facebook-outage-implications-for-iot-devices

IoT devices are critical to a wide range of use cases in the enterprise, but these endpoints can be difficult to update, manage and secure without the right approach and set of tools.
Many organizations already deploy thousands -- sometimes hundreds of thousands -- of sensors, surveillance cameras, access control systems or energy and infrastructure systems. Responsibility for these devices is costly and presents an overwhelming management and security challenge for IT and physical security teams.
The first major hurdle IT teams face when managing and securing IoT devices is that they must manually complete device maintenance, monitoring and security compliance; in the long term, this proves to be costly and inefficient. Often enterprises have multiple fleets of disparate IoT devices from different vendors, making them challenging to manage. Many of the devices are physically remote or difficult to access. Their operating commands and maintenance schedules vary. At a large scale, organizations struggle to monitor and control even basics such as firmware updates and password rotations.
Continue reading: https://internetofthingsagenda.techtarget.com/post/4-steps-IT-can-take-to-manage-the-IoT-device-explosion

IoT has flourished its arches in every floor possible be it industry, agriculture, energy projects or transportation. Its application is playing a major role in transforming the analog world into a digital one. Industrial IoT is topping the list while talking about the applications area.  The industrial IoT application area covers a wide range of connected “things” projects both inside and outside the factory. For example, many IoT-based factory automation and control projects include holistic smart factory solutions with numerous elements such as production floor monitoring, wearables, and Augmented Reality on the shop floor, remote PLC control, or automated quality control systems.
Apart from Industry, IoT is revolutionizing with an unstoppable speed in every area possible such as transportation/mobility, Healthcare, Supply Chains, and Cities. The Internet of Things (IoT) emerged merely as a concept in the early 2000s, and as we approach 2021, trends show that this technology is here to stay. Reports indicate that there will be 35.82 billion IoT devices installed worldwide by 2021 and 75.44 billion by 2025.
Have you ever wondered about a city with talkative Trash Bins, Automated guided streets lights, thousands of E-vehicle charging stations, AI controlled Traffic management systems and a lot more? Obviously we never even imagined this but have seen these things in movies. Now, IoT is making all of this possible in the real world. Today, we have a lot of smart cities with Singapore topping the list followed by Seoul, London and Barcelona. It will be interesting to dig deeper into the topic of smart cities and secure homes with IoT.
Continue reading: https://www.eletimes.com/iot-revolutionising-the-sustainable-and-secure-homes

We are witnessing numerous and damaging attacks on critical infrastructure lately. What is the main cause that makes them susceptible to these attacks?
Over recent years, attacks on critical infrastructure have grown from moderate risk to major headline-grabbing news and attackers’ capabilities have also continued to develop.
Criminal organizations and nation state threat actors have continued to ramp up attacks on critical infrastructure entities, with major attacks on the Colonial Pipeline, SolarWinds, and the California and Florida water systems to name a few.
The critical infrastructure sector is vital to the successful functioning of modern society and economies. Whether it’s electricity generation, oil and gas, telecom or water, the services these organizations provide are essential to everyday life, and for businesses to operate effectively.
Due to the vital role these organizations play, they are attractive targets for threat actors wanting to cause serious disruption through cyberattacks. Motivation for doing so varies from hacktivists with political motivations, hostile nation-states wanting to cause economic damage or criminals seeking to extort money.
Traditionally, critical infrastructure lags behind in its investments in cybersecurity or cybersecurity is not seen as a core business priority. When you combine an easy target with high impact to the business and their customers, and the means to pay, you’ve got the prime target for a cyberattack.
Continue reading: https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2021/10/06/critical-infrastructure-iot-security/

IoT security proves a common stumbling block for companies investing in their digital transformation. Between both hardware and cybersecurity considerations, there’s a lot of ground to cover and the space moves fast with best practices and new vulnerabilities coming out nearly daily and, as many companies find out the hard way, you don’t know what you don’t know. Keeping up with the latest cybersecurity news, acting according to best practices, and redesigning security tactics and strategies can seem functionally impossible.
But don’t worry — there is help in the offing. In an upcoming webinar, Pelion is bringing a team of security experts to give you an overview of what goes into securing IoT projects from end to end. The webinar, “Everything You Need to Know About IoT Security in 60 Minutes” will take place October 7 at 11 a.m. Eastern, hosted by IoT For All. Join the session to make sure you’re not missing mission-critical steps in your IoT security planning.
Continue reading: https://www.iotforall.com/iot-security-do-you-know-it-all-find-out-now

In early August, RaceDayQuads dropped a 14,000-word, 154-page brief in a potentially ground-shaking case challenging the legality of the Federal Aviation Administration’s actions during the two years it took to finalize its early 2021 final rule on Remote Identification (RID) of Unmanned Aircraft. A win for RDQ would likely blow up the rule and require the FAA to go back to square one on its process. The cascading effects could include additional delays in routine expanded commercial drone operations, including operations over people and beyond visual line of sight. It could also impact implementation of a low-altitude unmanned traffic management system. All of these operations and systems remain critical to getting the nascent commercial drone industry off the ground. On Oct 5, after receiving a 30 day extension to respond, the federal government filed its 86-page reply. The fight is officially on.
The Rule RDQ is Trying to Get RID Of
The RID rule requires all drones over 0.55 pounds that register with the FAA to have an “electronic license plate” in the form of either an RID capability integrated into the drone at the time of manufacture (Standard RID drone) or attached to the drone as an RID broadcast module (Broadcast Module RID or BMID drone). The required RID technology would transmit “message elements” (MEs) through a broadcast signal, which would be available to any member of the public, that would include, among other things, the location of the drone and its operator.
Law enforcement and security agencies would additionally have the ability to triangulate these MEs with FAA registration data, to help pinpoint bad actors. RID non-compliant drones would only be permitted to fly in Federally Recognized Identification Areas (FRIAs), which only FAA-recognized Community Based Organizations (CBO) or educational institutions can apply to carve out. The FRIA policy is currently being written.
The rule became effective on April 21, but drone operators do not have to comply with it until September 16, 2023. Drone manufacturers have a shorter leash. They must start baking in RID capabilities before the production compliance deadline of September 15, 2022.
The final rule surprised many in the drone industry because it differed so significantly from the FAA’s original proposal in its Notice of Public Rulemaking (NPRM). Published on New Year’s eve 2019, the NPRM focused on a network-based RID solution in which Standard RID drones would be required to have both network and broadcast capabilities. Limited RID drones, which the FAA jettisoned in the final rule and replaced with the BMID drone, would have been network-only. The final rule deviated from the proposed rule in several other important respects outlined in the brief.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/dawnzoldi/2021/10/05/this-case-against-the-faa-could-revector-the-commercial-drone-industry/?sh=1b3c70de360a

In this episode, Caroline Donnelly, Clare McDonald and Brian McKenna first discuss the 10th anniversary edition of Computer Weekly’s annual program to choose the most influential women in UK tech, as disclosed at the Computer Weekly & Spinks Diversity & Inclusion in Tech Conference, held on 30 September 2021. This year’s winner was Poppy Gustafsson, CEO of Cambridge-based artificial intelligence (AI) and cyber security firm Darktrace.
They also discuss the aspiration of Newham Borough Council to build a data economy, and an AI-enabled puffin-counting project on the Scottish Isle of May, whose goal is to speed up renewable energy development.
After a bit of chat about the ups and downs of this second mostly virtual IT conference season, the team focuses in on CW’s own event, and its associated list of the top 50 most influential women in UK IT 2021, which sits alongside the programs Hall of Fame and Rising Stars cohorts. There were 10 new entrants to each of these this year, marking the 10th edition of the program.
Continue reading: https://www.computerweekly.com/podcast/Top-women-in-UK-tech-AI-on-puffin-island-Computer-Weekly-Downtime-Upload-podcast

Commercial drone use has become prevalent across a variety of industries since the 1980s. These tools have become more commonplace over the last several years and have proven to be quite valuable.
“The total addressable value of drone-powered solutions in all applicable industries is significant — more than $127 billion,” the MIT Technology Review wrote in 2016. “Among the most promising areas is agriculture, where drones offer the potential for addressing several major challenges.”
Global Market Insights predicts that the agricultural drone market will surpass $1 billion by 2024.
“Growing awareness regarding (unmanned aerial vehicle) implementation benefits among farmers will support the agricultural drones market share from 2017 to 2024,” the company concluded. “Increasing technological advancements to enhance quality farming techniques will further drive the industry demand over the forecast timeline. Increasing automation due to lack of skilled resources and labor crisis will fuel the industry. Favorable government initiatives across the agricultural sector will allow large and small operations to aid in effective farming practices.”
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