Amsterdam Drone Week and Commercial UAV Expo Europe join forces

Amsterdam Drone Week and global organizer of Commercial UAV Expo Europe, Diversified Communications, are joining forces to host a combined tradeshow and conference focusing on drones. The end result is the biggest drone platform in Europe which will take place 30 November – 4 December 2020 at RAI Amsterdam. The partnership was announced this morning at Commercial UAV Expo Europe at the RAI in Amsterdam.

The Commercial UAV (unmanned aerial vehicles) Expo Americas has been hosted in Las Vegas since 2015. The main focus of the Expo is companies that use drones for a wide range of commercial applications in top vertical markets for drone integration and operation such as surveying & mapping, precision agriculture, construction, energy and utilities, public safety and emergency services and more. Exhibitors showcase airframes, software, sensors and services. Commercial UAV Expo Europe is now in its third edition. In 2018 another major drone event, the Amsterdam Drone Week, was held in the RAI Amsterdam congress and exhibition centre.

Stronger together
Commercial UAV Expo Europe will, in the future, be hosted in cooperation with the Amsterdam Drone Week, under the motto ‘stronger together’. The decision to join forces will already be visible during the next edition of the Amsterdam Drone Week, from 2 to 6 December 2019, where a special pavilion will be set up for Commercial UAV Expo exhibitors. In 2020, the collaboration will become even more evident, as Commercial UAV Expo Europe will then be setting up and occupying an entire hall as part of Amsterdam Drone Week 2020.

For its part, the Amsterdam Drone Week will be hosting the ‘ADW: Global Urban Air Mobility Forum’. This international conference will take place for the first time in 2019 during the Amsterdam Drone Week. The conference will be organised in collaboration with the so-called EIP-SCC-UAM Initiative, which already counts 41 European cities among its participants. The goal is to facilitate the safe use of innovative drone applications such as ambulance drones.

Hub
According to exhibition manager Nynke Lipsius of the Amsterdam Drone Week, both events add to each other’s strengths, substantively as well as conceptually. "The Amsterdam Drone Week is a platform that serves as a bridge between all relevant parties including the authorities as well as parties from the aviation, telecom, and automotive sectors", explains Lipsius. ‘It allows these parties to discuss infrastructure, regulations, and UAS technology with the shared goal of facilitating Urban Air Mobility (UAM) and thereby creating new opportunities in urban areas for improvements in mobility, safety, sustainability, and spatial and economic development. This in turn, creates opportunities for further growth in the vertical industries focused on by the Commercial UAV Expo trade fair. The Amsterdam Drone Week is actually the hub around which the applications are created and developed.’

The organisers of Commercial UAV Expo see their collaboration as a partnership between the present and the future. "We are very focused on what is happening now. Who’s using drones commercially and for what purpose?"; explains Lisa Murray from the international event organizer Diversified Communications."We focus on smaller drones that are used for applications such as inspections and monitoring and surveying & mapping within numerous sectors. The Amsterdam Drone Week is more focused on the big players and the direction that the drone industry will take during the coming 5 to 10 years including urban air mobility. Of course, that’s also very important for us. For example, the industry needs to know which regulations will be put in place in future. If the regulations formulated allow more people to actually use drones, the entire industry will benefit".

Lisa Murray (Diversified Communications) (l) and Paul Riemens (RAI Amsterdam) (r)