State Departments of Transportation have moved well past the question of whether drones deliver value. The real challenge now is building programs that scale across divisions, districts, and mission types, all without sacrificing safety culture, regulatory discipline, or data quality. This session brings together practitioners who work for or with DOTs to examine what sustainable UAS program growth actually looks like in practice. Topics include embedding drone operations into existing professional roles, building governance frameworks that support distributed execution, and treating UAS outputs as enterprise data assets rather than isolated deliverables.
Attendees will also hear how agencies are integrating drones into live incident response scenarios, moving from ad-hoc deployments to standardized, defensible workflows that reduce clearance times and improve responder safety. Whether you’re launching a new program or trying to expand an existing one, this session delivers field-tested lessons you can apply immediately.
The following presentations will be shared in this session:
Scaling a State UAS Program by Leveraging Existing Expertise
Presented by Garrett Connolly and Christopher Grazioso, MassDOT Aeronautics Division
The challenge for state Departments of Transportation is no longer whether drones deliver value, but rather how to scale operations across divisions and districts while maintaining regulatory compliance, aviation discipline, and consistent data standards. This presentation examines how MassDOT’s Aeronautics Division built a structured agency-wide UAS program that addresses that challenge directly.
The defining characteristic of the model is workforce integration: training existing employees — civil engineers, bridge inspectors, construction personnel — to serve as Remote Pilots in Command within their primary professional roles rather than creating a separate aviation function. Centralized governance enables distributed execution, with mission approval, pilot currency tracking, and fleet management all coordinated through the Aeronautics Division. Attendees will leave with a transferable framework for scaling a public-sector UAS program without sacrificing operational control or safety culture.
How DOTs Are Using Drones to Reduce Incident Time, Improve Responder Safety, and Restore Traffic Faster
Presented by Benjamin Goddard, Altitude Integrity Group
Departments of Transportation across the U.S. are under increasing pressure to reduce incident clearance times while improving responder safety and minimizing secondary crashes. This session presents a real-world, asset-owner case study on how drones are being operationalized within roadway incident response to move agencies from ad-hoc flights to standardized, defensible operations.
Attendees will learn how UAS are integrated into live crash scenes to rapidly capture scene documentation, support interagency decision-making, and accelerate lane reopening. The presentation will cover governance, training, and operational workflows that allow drones to function as a force multiplier rather than a novelty tool. Emphasis will be placed on what works today, what fails in practice, and how agencies can immediately apply these lessons within their own organizations.
This session avoids theoretical concepts and instead focuses on actionable steps, measurable outcomes, and lessons learned from active DOT operations in complex, high-risk environments.
