Drone detection at events: where do you start?

Almost every event permit in the Netherlands now contains a clause about drones. Usually a ban, sometimes a duty to report. The question organisers ask us is rarely whether they need to do something, but what, and in which order. This article describes the approach we used in 2026 at Paaspop, the Four Days Marches, Hullabaloo and the Flower Parade.

1. Start with the permit and the risk

Read exactly what the municipality asks. If there is only a ban, the question is how you make that ban visible. If there is a duty to record observations, you also need a retention period and a report. Then discuss with security and police which risk you want to cover. A drone above the crowd is a different risk from a drone filming the campsite.

2. Decide what you want to see

For most events, three questions are enough: is anything flying, where is it and where is the pilot. Remote ID answers all three. If you also want to see drones without Remote ID, you add radar or an RF scanner, with a considerably higher budget and longer preparation. For public events that is rarely necessary: the drones flying there are consumer drones that broadcast.

3. Choose the placement

A Remote ID receiver works on line of sight. Height matters more than quantity. One unit on a twelve-metre lighting mast in the middle of the site sees more than three units at eye level along the edge. Look at the site plan for existing high points: stage towers, lighting masts, roofs of permanent buildings, aerial platforms that are there anyway.

• Compact festival site: one unit centrally, possibly a second for the campsite
• City event: two to four units on roofs around the area
• Route or parade: a chain of units every six to eight kilometres, depending on buildings

Arrange power and network per position. A network cable with PoE is the simplest. Where there is none, you use a 4G module, as we did at the Four Days Marches and the Flower Parade.

4. Draw the zones in advance

A detection is only useful if the right person sees it. So draw zones in the platform around the places that matter: the crowd area, the stage, the air ambulance landing spot, the emergency services access route. Link each zone to a recipient: the control room, the security team leader, the police team on the street. Do this a week in advance and test it with your own drone.

5. Agree who does what

The technology shows the pilot on the map. What happens next is up to people. At Paaspop, security went to pilots inside the site and police to pilots on the public road. At the Four Days Marches, the police team on the street received the alerts directly on their phones. Record those agreements in the operational plan and rehearse them in the briefing.

Keep the conversation with a pilot businesslike. In our experience, the majority do not know a ban applies and land immediately when asked. The platform stores the observation, so in case of repetition you can show it was not the first time.

6. Debrief with the data

Afterwards you export all observations: time, position, altitude, serial number. That overview is useful for the debrief with the municipality and for next year’s permit application. At the Flower Parade, the organiser used the data per municipality to show where extra communication to residents was needed.

How much time does this take?

With an AEROTECT operator, your own effort is limited to a half-hour intake call, providing the site plan and including the agreements in the operational plan. We install and test a day in advance. With self-operated rental, mounting the units is added, which takes about an hour per unit with the supplied hardware.