Barbara Breen

Barbara Bollard Breen is a senior lecturer in the School of Applied Sciences. Her research interests are in GIS applications, ecosystem management and spatial ecology. She has over 20 years experience working in government and NGO's in both Australia and New Zealand. Her research focus has recently been the identification and selection of Marine Protected Areas, using remote sensing technology, such as UAV, to map habitats and landscapes for conservation planning and integrating social data with environmental and biological information using decision support systems, multivariate statistics and GIS.
Featured image: New regulations for drone operation in New Zealand

New regulations for drone operation in New Zealand - Vantage Point

Aug 11, 2015 •

  Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), commonly referred to as “drones”, are becoming more readily available and affordable.  The vast majority of privately owned UAVs are used by hobbyists for taking aerial photographs and videos, or are flown just for fun.  Multi-rotor UAVs have also found many applications from photographing real estate to scientific research and monitoring of agriculture. Unfortunately, there are increasing numbers of reports from around the world of misuse of multi-rotors.  In some cases, drones have been flown close to airliners, putting at risk passengers and aircraft.  Privacy issues have also arisen, with property owners raising concerns that aerial cameras have been used in peeping Tom activities. In most countries, aviation regulations were written long before the advent of UAVs, and regulatory bodies are struggling to catch up with the new technology.  UAVs have therefore been regarded as … Read More