Good practice:

Catalonia Smart Drones

Catalonia Smart Drones is a joint initiative of the Catalan Government and the Catalan industry of drones with technological centers, universities and other sector entities with an aim to promote the sector of drones in Catalonia.
The main objective is to increase the competitiveness of Catalan drone industry promoting projects that encourage the creation of employment and improve the positioning of the Catalan Smart Drones sector globally. Its goals are:
• Establish a joint strategy as a cluster to coordinate the different agents involved in the sector to find synergies, complement them to tackle larger projects, collaborate with technology and research centers to take advantage of research and development.
• To announce the services and solutions with drones, disseminate their possibilities and the associated technology through the different communication channels as well as participating in fairs and other events.
• Provide training in this field both at university level and in a short term courses.
• Keeping track of legislation both nationally and internationally to see how it affects the sector. Also participate, as much as possible, in international institutions to influence the most relevant sector level decision.
Catalonia Smart Drones develops the sectoral demand of technologies such as drones, IoT and blockchain in traditional or non-technological sectors such as agriculture and livestock, industry and utilities with a 3 step process

Run: 160.000€ / year
Staff: Community manager, Project manager Junior, Project manager Senior and Manager.
Website for the comminity, Website of challenge dissemination and social networks

Six community forums were organized, the cluster participated in 27 third party seminars, during 3 years organized an stand at the Mobile World Congress with 10 companies having a place at the stand, collaborated with many events as drone competitions, organized 5 drone technology training courses for around 150 government employees, facilitated the testing of drones and applications to around 35 companies and published around 170 news on the website and 4700 tweets.

The Spanish drone regulation RD 1036/2017 impose a big restrictions to the operations and services that can be done with drones and limited the possibilities of the drone technology to specific applications. With the new European regulation this is going to change.

This cluster could be implemented in other regions to foster drone market uptake and increase social acceptance. It also could be possible to implement one or more of the activities being carried out by Catalonia Smart Drones without implementing the whole project.
This initiative helps developing the market and the sector finding opportunities for companies, technological centers and other institutions, building synergies among them and can be transferred to other regions by adapting the activities to the particularities of the region.
Some clusters of drones are being developed around Europe so if public authorities want to boost this sector at their region can follow this examples, as Catalonia Smart Drones.