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| Type | Bachelor's Thesis |
| Scope | Discipline-based scholarship |
| Title | Autonomous drones for emergency services: accountability in socio-technical decision-making systems in the fire service |
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| Institution | University of Zurich |
| Faculty | Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics |
| Date | 2023 |
| Abstract Text | During the last decades, unmanned drones have been deployed to a broad range of use cases. With the emergence and continuous development of artificial intelligence, applications which involve autonomous drones have attracted the attention of numerous fields of research. Currently, autonomous multi drone systems are studied and developed across fields like robotic, computer science, and environmental science. However, while the technical capabilities of such autonomous systems are constantly increasing, their impact on accountability has gone unnoticed. This seems surprising since autonomous drones nowadays have the capability to decide independently from any human intervention. This study integrates different perspectives on accountability to answer the question: How do autonomous drones’ applications impact accountability? Analysing two firefighting use cases, this study reveals three pitfalls to accountability in the application of autonomous drones, namely: a) autonomous drones are not perceived as being autonomous, b) the drones are not perceived as trustworthy and official actors, and lastly, c) the interaction between the drones and participants is leading to accountability-relevant problems. The study concludes with a set of proposed solutions to mitigate the identified pitfalls and, thus, enhance accountability in the studied firefighting use cases. The proposed solutions also serve as a starting point for further research on this topic and to verify or discover further enhancements to accountability aspects in the context of autonomous systems. |
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