For those of us living, working, or playing on the Central Coast, the answer may begin with recurring road closures, power outages, or concerns about how long help will take to arrive after a serious accident. We organize our lives around these problems—often with considerable difficulty—without necessarily knowing how drones and other aircraft could help us navigate them.
Through MBEP’s economic development initiatives—including Regions Rise Together, Uplift Central Coast, and the recently established tri-county Economic Development District (EDD)—communities have consistently described how gaps in infrastructure and critical services affect their livelihoods. The Regions Rise Together Investment Blueprint documents the consequences of natural and man-made challenges, including disruptions to agricultural work, displacement of families, and worsening food insecurity. These findings offer a starting point for exploring where drones and other emerging aircraft could help.
We may see an aircraft in the friendly skies and have no earthly idea why it is there—or what it has to do with us. The connection between what happens overhead and the disruptions we experience on the ground is not always apparent.
Pajaro’s flooding illustrates how critical access can be when families are displaced and assistance is needed. Knowing which roads are passable and where damage is concentrated helps responders determine how to reach people. Drones can help gather that information: the FAA has documented their use after disasters to assess damage and inform decisions about reopening roads and bridges. How could we build on those applications to strengthen our communities’ response when floodwaters leave families isolated and essential supplies and emergency care out of reach?
The same connection matters for the infrastructure we depend on every day. A power outage can mean spoiled groceries, interrupted work, or difficulty keeping medical equipment running. Drones already help inspect power lines and identify equipment problems so crews can prioritize repairs. An aircraft hovering near a utility pole may be helping spot a problem that could otherwise go undetected until something fails.
Aircraft can also bring help directly to someone in need. After a serious collision on a remote or congested road, distance and traffic can delay emergency care. In early deployments, trained paramedics have flown small electric aircraft to patients and begun treatment before ground ambulances arrived. For our region, that raises a practical question: Where could this approach shorten the wait for care—from remote communities in the Santa Cruz Mountains to stretches of coastal roadway narrowed to a single lane?
We already know where access breaks down, which disruptions recur, and what they cost our households and communities. Understanding how aircraft can respond gives us a basis for identifying our own use cases—and bringing forward needs that might otherwise go unrecognized.
For CAAMCI, these insights help connect the region’s advanced aviation possibilities with the needs of the people they serve. They can inform which applications we explore, where we test them, and how we assess whether they make a meaningful difference.
Yet even when several applications offer practical benefits, funding, staffing, and operational capacity shape what can move forward. Choosing where to begin means weighing needs that may be equally pressing to the communities experiencing them—which leads me to ask:
What happens when every practical use case can’t be a priority?
We’ll explore that question in the next CAAMCI Chronicle.
Sources & Further Reading
Monterey Bay Economic Partnership and Regions Rise Together Collaborative. Investment Blueprint 2025–2030, pp. 11, 24–28.
California Department of Transportation. “Highway 1 to Reopen Today at Regent’s Slide.” January 14, 2026.
Federal Aviation Administration. “The UAS Integration Pilot Program.”
Pacific Gas and Electric Company. “System Inspections.”