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Developing business ideas for drone technologies
Developing business ideas for drone technologies

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4 Drone-driven ecosystems for sustainable livestock management in rural France

There is a wide range of actors, such as policy makers, regulators, farmers, drone manufacturers, that are all interested in exploring and supporting the uptake of drones for livestock management.

Figure 5 below maps the interactions and interdependencies of all the actors that have a direct and indirect interest (akin to ‘stakeholders’ of Week 1) in this area and that are linked to the pilot research of IDELE.

A complex network with many interconnected actors in a drone-driven ecosystem
Figure 5 Drone-driven ecosystem for livestock management in rural France as captured in 2023 (Bojkova et al., 2023)

Graph note: Red boxes denote new research/exploratory generated knowledge (e.g. reports, guidelines, data); Green denotes policy recommendations/implications; Green denotes information/resource flows linked to drone technical aspects. NAA: National Aviation Authority, a governmental organisation in France; EASA: European Agencies and Inter-governmental Agencies in drone regulation.

Figure 5 gives an example of a drone-driven ecosystem for livestock management in this specific area of France. Note that the actors represented in the graph are connected through various mechanisms and complex relations and depend on each other to source expert knowledge and understanding of drone use regulations, and evidence-based research findings on the benefits of drone use for livestock management. (The note on Figure 5 offers details on how each type of interaction is represented in the graph using colours).

The text below explains in detail how different actors depend on each other to source something valuable. The links between the different actors in Figure 5 are captured by directional arrows. These directional arrows represent flows of different types of ‘value’ (e.g. information on technical aspects, research findings) that is exchanged, shared or jointly created by the actors in this ecosystem. For instance, IDELE gets evidence on the use of drones from pilot research from field trials on the Jalogny farm (orange arrow). IDELE uses this evidence, together with its expertise, to generate evidence-based research reports documenting the costs/benefits for the use of drones. These reports can in turn be directed to both:

  1. the French government to inform new policy in the use of drones in rural areas
  2. Flying Eye, a leading manufacturer and distributor of drones in France, to support them with research on manufacturing purpose-built drones specific for this market of livestock management.