Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), Barcelona, Spain.
Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM), Liverpool, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2024 Jan 31;19(1):e0287270. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0287270. eCollection 2024.
The use of drones in environment and health research is a relatively new phenomenon. A principal research activity drones are used for is environmental monitoring, which can raise concerns in local communities. Existing ethical guidance for researchers is often not specific to drone technology and practices vary between research settings. Therefore, this scoping review aims to gather the evidence available on ethical considerations surrounding drone use as perceived by local communities, ethical considerations reported on by researchers implementing drone research, and published ethical guidance related to drone deployment.
This scoping review will follow the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for scoping reviews (PRISMA-ScR) and the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) guidelines. The literature search will be conducted using academic databases and grey literature sources. After pilot testing the inclusion criteria and data extraction tool, two researchers will double-screen and then chart available evidence independently. A content analysis will be carried out to identify patterns of categories or terms used to describe ethical considerations related to drone usage for environmental monitoring in the literature using the R Package RQDA. Discrepancies in any phase of the project will be solved through consensus between the two reviewers. If consensus cannot be reached, a third arbitrator will be consulted.
Ethical approval is not required; only secondary data will be used. This protocol is registered on the Open Science Framework (osf.io/a78et). The results will be disseminated through publication in a scientific journal and will be used to inform drone field campaigns in the Wellcome Trust funded HARMONIZE project. HARMONIZE aims to develop cost-effective and reproducible digital infrastructure for stakeholders in climate change hotspots in Latin America & the Caribbean and will use drone technology to collect data on fine scale landscape changes.
无人机在环境和健康研究中的应用是一个相对较新的现象。无人机主要用于环境监测，这可能会引起当地社区的关注。现有的研究人员伦理准则通常不适用于无人机技术，而且不同的研究环境之间的实践也存在差异。因此，本范围综述旨在收集有关当地社区对无人机使用的伦理考虑的现有证据、研究人员在实施无人机研究时报告的伦理考虑以及与无人机部署相关的已发表的伦理准则。
本范围综述将遵循系统评价和荟萃分析扩展的首选报告项目（PRISMA-ScR）和 Joanna Briggs 研究所（JBI）指南。文献检索将使用学术数据库和灰色文献来源进行。在试点测试纳入标准和数据提取工具后，两名研究人员将独立地进行双重筛选和图表记录。将使用 R 包 RQDA 对文献中与环境监测相关的无人机使用的伦理考虑进行内容分析，以识别用于描述这些伦理考虑的类别或术语的模式。在项目的任何阶段，如果出现分歧，将通过两位评审员之间的共识来解决。如果无法达成共识，则将咨询第三位仲裁员。
不需要伦理批准；仅使用二级数据。本方案在开放科学框架（osf.io/a78et）上注册。结果将通过在科学期刊上发表来传播，并将用于为惠康信托基金资助的 HARMONIZE 项目中的无人机实地活动提供信息。HARMONIZE 旨在为拉丁美洲和加勒比地区气候变化热点的利益相关者开发具有成本效益和可复制的数字基础设施，并将使用无人机技术收集有关小尺度景观变化的数据。
