Protecting farm privacy while researching large‐scale unmanned aircraft systems platforms for agricultural applications

The objective of this paper is to explore data privacy and sharing challenges associated with conducting regional data collection using large‐scale unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) technologies. During the 2016 growing season, the North Dakota State University Extension Service and Elbit Systems of America conducted a proof‐of‐concept UAS Research and Development (R&D) project to use large‐scale UAS platforms to address some of the issues limiting UAS technology adoption. While the researchers initially thought that the high‐resolution spatial and temporal field imagery collected would be well received by area farmers, the team learned that some had concerns over farm operations privacy and about who would have access to the data. The team conducted multiple stakeholder meetings to address the issues raised. While the flights were successfully executed, problems related to farmer interest in the data collected and how to get that data to farmers were identified. Though the project demonstrated how third party operation of large‐scale UAS can remove the operational burden from farmers, the project introduced additional privacy concerns and highlighted the need for better rural broadband to make grower access to data in the cloud practical. Core Ideas Farmers are concerned about their data privacy regarding imagery collected with unmanned aircraft systems. Farmers have a higher expectation of privacy than current laws and regulations grant. Ground truth data controlled by farmers is still needed to understand aerial imagery. Large, unmanned aircraft systems have a value that is lacking in other sources of remotely sensed data. Agricultural aerial imagery will be more accessible to farmers via better broadband coverage.