This case study describes how Uganda Flying Labs, the Uganda Red Cross, and the World Bank undertook drone mapping activities in the immediate aftermath of the 2018 landslide in Uganda. On the afternoon of October 11, 2018, three days of heavy rains in eastern Uganda’s Bududa District triggered a powerful landslide in the foothills of Mt. Elgon, which forced boulders into water channels that flowed through the Bukalasi sub-county. These now-blocked waterways overflowed, sweeping through the Bukalasi trading center and devastating the area. The landslide disaster was not the first to take place in the steep mountains of eastern Uganda, where deadly landslides in 2010, 2011, and 2012 killed hundreds of people and displaced many more.
These dangerous landslides have become more frequent as farmers move into the Mt. Elgon area to take advantage of the exceptionally rich soils that surround it. What was different about the 2018 landslide was the equipment that aid groups used to map its extent and to better understand what caused it to happen: small unmanned aerial systems, or UAS. These small unmanned aircraft are capable of capturing high-resolution imagery of disaster areas in areas that are inaccessible to manned aircraft and to satellite photography, and cost less money to operate than traditional remote sensing methods. This case study also discusses the data that these organizations collected, how the data was used to support emergency responders, and the key lessons that aid workers learned from the event.