Abstract
This chapter examines the intersection between drone data and big data. It focuses on two uses of drones for civil purposes, crisis informatics and precision agriculture, neither of which are thought to raise significant privacy and ethical issues, as they do not focus on people. The chapter outlines the ways in which the integration of drones into big data collection systems augments the privacy and ethical issues raised by drones and big data. Specifically, integrating drone data with social media data in crisis informatics and integrating drone data with meteorological, topographical and consumer data in precision agriculture raises significant issues around identifiability, discrimination and equality and the digital divide. The chapter concludes that drones are increasingly becoming big data collection platforms, and as they become integrated with additional technologies and systems, it is problematic to characterise civil drone applications as either “high risk” or “low risk”. Instead, it is necessary to consider the privacy and ethical implications of all of the potential technologies involved rather than focusing on drones themselves.
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- 1.
Finn and Wright 2012.
- 2.
Finn et al. 2014.
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
Boyd and Crawford 2012, p. 664.
- 6.
- 7.
Bell et al. 2014.
- 8.
The White House 2014.
- 9.
Crisis informatics is an umbrella term that “includes empirical study as well as socially and behaviorally conscious ICT development and deployment. Both research and development of ICT for crisis situations need to work from a united perspective of the information, disaster, and technical sciences”. See Palen et al. 2007, p 1.
- 10.
Precision agriculture involves the collection of real-time data on weather, soil, air quality, crop maturity, equipment and labour costs to be used in predictive analytics to make smarter decisions. IBM no date.
- 11.
Finn et al. 2014.
- 12.
Finn et al. 2014, p. 174.
- 13.
Finn and Wright 2012.
- 14.
- 15.
Bollier 2010, p. 23.
- 16.
Meeder et al. 2010 p. 1.
- 17.
- 18.
Boyd and Crawford 2012, p. 19.
- 19.
Finn and Wadhwa 2014, p. 20.
- 20.
- 21.
For an in-depth discussion of these initiatives, see Meier 2015.
- 22.
Meier 2015, para 2.
- 23.
Meier, personal communication.
- 24.
Vega-Gorgojo et al. 2015, p. 12.
- 25.
Buscher et al. 2014, p. 98.
- 26.
UN OCHA 2014, p. 3.
- 27.
UN OCHA 2014.
- 28.
Meier 2015, para 10.
- 29.
Meier 2015.
- 30.
UN OCHA 2014.
- 31.
IFRC 2013.
- 32.
Bowser and Shanley 2013.
- 33.
Crampton et al. (2013).
- 34.
Craglia and Shanley 2015.
- 35.
Bowser and Shanley 2013, p. 34.
- 36.
UN OCHA 2014, p. 5.
- 37.
Schroeder 2015.
- 38.
Bunge 2014.
- 39.
Doering 2014.
- 40.
This is especially significant as the global population is growing at a faster rate than productivity and is expected to grow to 9.6 billion by 2050.
- 41.
Bunge 2014.
- 42.
Drone (or UAV) refers only to the airplane or flying component of a digitally connected network that includes pilots on the ground, a control station, on-board computers, data links, and other ancillary operational assets. Consequently, the term “UAS”—unmanned aerial system—more precisely describes what is typically thought of as a drone. Ravich 2014, p. 4.
- 43.
Anderson 2014.
- 44.
Ibid.
- 45.
Kshetri 2014.
- 46.
Bunge cited in Kshetri 2014, p. 10.
- 47.
Rohr 2014.
- 48.
- 49.
Doering 2014.
- 50.
Anderson 2014.
- 51.
Doering 2014.
- 52.
Craglia and Shanley 2015.
- 53.
Finn et al. 2014, p. 16.
- 54.
McKinsey and Company 2014.
- 55.
UAViators 2015.
- 56.
McCahill and Finn 2014.
- 57.
Andrejevic 2012, p. 76.
- 58.
Kshetri 2014.
- 59.
Lohr 2010.
- 60.
Letouzé et al. 2013, p. 22.
- 61.
Wessels et al. 2015.
- 62.
IFRC 2013, p. 130.
- 63.
Note this refers to small scale farms in developing countries but is applicable. Kshetri 2014, p. 12.
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Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge funding from two sources for this project. The first is the BYTE project (The Big data roadmap and cross-disciplinarY community for addressing socieTal Externalities) under grant agreement number 619551. The second is funding from the European Commission through the EU program for the Competitiveness of Enterprises and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) (COSME). The views in this paper are those of the authors and are in no way intended to reflect those of the European Commission.
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Finn, R., Donovan, A. (2016). Big Data, Drone Data: Privacy and Ethical Impacts of the Intersection Between Big Data and Civil Drone Deployments. In: Custers, B. (eds) The Future of Drone Use. Information Technology and Law Series, vol 27. T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6265-132-6_3
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