Thursday, December 19, 2019

New article in SNAS "Securing sustainability in Indian agriculture through civilian UAV: a responsible innovation perspective" by Chamuah & Singh

Securing sustainability in Indian agriculture through civilian UAV: a responsible innovation perspective
by Anjan Chamuah & Rajbeer Singh; SN Applied Sciences, January 2020, 2:106

Abstract: Emerging technology like civilian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has the potential to exert an impact on agriculture production and crop damages assessment. Securing sustainability in agriculture requires accountability and responsibility of the actors engaged in the deployment of the civilian UAV due to associated deployment risks and unintended consequences. UAV technology has the potential to replace remote sensing technologies like satellite imageries and piloted aircraft used in the crop insurance business. The governance of deployment of UAV technology in India is a complex challenge when a well-developed regulatory system is not in place and diverse actors involved in the deployment and operation of civilian UAV for agricultural applications. Therefore, two main questions, how UAV innovations can lead to sustainability in Indian agriculture and how are the issues of governance of civil UAV innovations in crop insurance applications addressed, are dealt with. The responsible innovation approach is adopted as a theoretical framework. The exploratory and qualitative study used in-depth interviews, and the interviewees were selected through snowball sampling technique. The results suggest that in the governance of emerging technologies like UAV certain values such as trust, transparency, safety, autonomy, and environmental friendliness assumed high significance. Findings also suggest that UAV has the risk-taking ability in adverse weather condition. The UAV technology also creates values (social, economic and environmental) for deployment in the crop insurance business in India.
Keywords: Civilian UAV Sustainability Responsible innovation Agriculture insurance Accountability

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