At the Metropolitan Mosquito Control District, we have begun to incorporate the use of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) in our operations to control both human biting floodwater Aedes species and Coquillettidia perturbans mosquito species in the Twin Cities metropolitan area. This was done in an effort to improve our efficacy in control, efficiency in material application, and to address potential safety concerns of field staff. We designated potential mosquito habitat as UAS worthy sites if they were over one acre in size, were known as potential hazard sites, and if they had presence of Cq. perturbans or a designation of ‘prehatch’ due to site history associated with high frequency of Ae. spp. In this presentation we plan on explaining our decision as to what sites we found UAS operations to be useful, how this process had improved our operations, how we plan on utilizing this technology in the future.
