The Larimer County Unmanned Aircraft System (LCUAS) Team officially launched a county-wide program on July 1, 2017. The LCUAS team worked together for nearly three years to obtain FAA certifications, determine best practices, develop shared Operational Guidelines, and conduct training. Partner agencies continue to train together, share knowledge and information, and provide mutual support to serve the safety needs of Larimer County residents. The LCUAS Team consists of law enforcement, fire, and emergency services agencies in Larimer County. The agencies currently involved are Poudre Fire Authority, Loveland Fire Rescue Authority, Larimer County Sheriff’s Office (including Larimer County Search and Rescue), Fort Collins Police Services, Loveland Police Department, and the Colorado State University Police Department. http://larimeruas.com Operations are primarily conducted under Civil Aircraft Operation (Part 107) rules. The Larimer County Sheriff's Office has a blanket COA that LCUAS agencies operate under as a Public Aircraft Operation at night and over people when warranted. All LCUAS Team aircraft are currently owned by individual agencies. Initially, all member agencies deployed DJI Inspire 1 aircraft. The available aircraft have since expanded to include DJI Phantom 4, Mavic Pro and Matrice 210 air frames. An Aeryon SkyRanger UAS is also available to the team through a sponsorship agreement.

The FCPS CRASH Team started using drones for collision scene documentation and speed reconstruction in July of 2017. We started by measuring with both total station and photogrammetry before switching completely to UAVs. Since going live, we have reconstructed 14 serious injury/fatal collisions both day and night using aerial photogrammetry. We use Pix4D for photogrammetric processing and use the Pix4D Capture app for flight planning/image acquisition. Our team started with a DJI Inspire 1 with the X3 camera and moved to a DJI Phantom 4 Advanced early this year. The Phantom 4 is still preferred (has the full 1" sensor), but the Inspire 1 is a good back-up. The sensor on the Phantom 4 is especially good for night imagery. The aircraft must be set to stop and hover at each exposure station to collect proper night imagery. In poor weather conditions we have used an Aeryon SkyRanger and also have a Matrice 210 at our disposal. Imagery collected during rain and snow storms has turned out good and has processed fine. We continue to use our total station to set ground control (typically 5 points) and measure check points (usually 5 to 7). The total station ground control measurements are used to scale and orient the Pix4D project. The check points are used to determine the map accuracy following ASPRS Positional Accuracy Standards. Although the post is titled collision reconstruction, the same process is used on outdoor crime scenes as well. We recently mapped a 48 acre apartment complex for a homicide investigation with good accuracy (within a few inches). Example of the Pix4D Point Cloud. Drew Jurkofsky Traffic Enforcement Officer ACTAR #1348 djurkofsky@fcgov.com