Overwatch built around what your
data protection officer will ask.
Where a service's drone reaches the scene before the first appliance, thermal overwatch shows the incident commander where the people and the fire are. The capability isn't the hard part — the lawful basis, the data protection impact assessment (DPIA) and the audit trail are. Warden is a software layer designed to help your service answer those, while your service keeps flying its own drones as it does today.
Warden is pre-production and not yet a registered company. There is no live deployment, no service running at any brigade, and every record you can reach from this site is synthetic. No real aircraft has been connected, and Warden's record can be checked from an export against a published key and, up to its latest time-stamped anchor (one whose token verifies), against an outside RFC 3161 time-stamp; the newest events are not covered until the next anchor. Warden is not asking your service to take it on directly: it is designed to reach you through a supplier you already use. Our full status, including what isn't built →
01 What changes on the ground
The first ten minutes of a structure fire, with a picture instead of a blank street.
Where your service's drone reaches the scene ahead of the appliances, it streams thermal to the incident commander. Before the first crew is committed, the commander can see where heat signatures are, where the fire is travelling, and where not to send anyone — through smoke and in the dark.
Warden is not the aircraft. Your service flies its own drones, as it does today. Warden is the console the commander watches, a named person's authorisation recorded before launch, and a hash-chained record of each decision. It sends no command to the aircraft, so it records the decision to launch; it cannot stop one.
Before Built on the ground
Situational awareness assembled in smoke, under time pressure, by the crews already committed — and with no durable account of what was decided or when.
After Read from above, first
The layout handed to the commander before boots are down, with no facial recognition, nothing stored by default, and every decision on a hash-chained record designed to make a later change visible.
See it minute by minute: a callout from 03:12 to sealed record →
02 The questions your data protection officer (DPO) will ask
Designed into the architecture, not bolted on afterwards. The final answers are your service's to give.
Basis Why may we process this at all?
Warden proposes public task (Art 6(1)(e) of the UK General Data Protection Regulation, the UK GDPR), a statutory fire & rescue function, with vital interests as the narrow fallback in an acute life threat. Casualty or health signals would be special-category data; your data protection officer decides the Article 9 condition, and Art 9(2)(c) (vital interests) is one candidate. The basis is your service's to decide.
Identity Are you identifying people?
No. Overwatch assesses a scene, never identifies a person. No facial-recognition or biometric model is integrated, and the architecture is designed so one cannot be added without a governance change.
Storage What happens to the footage?
Live-only by default — nothing is recorded. Where a deployment opts to retain, a retention clock is designed to enforce deletion, with the deletion itself logged on the record. That scheduled deletion is not yet switched on.
Proof How do we know the log is honest?
Every decision is hash-chained with SHA-256 and signed with Ed25519 under a key whose fingerprint Warden publishes, so you can check an export of the record against that pinned fingerprint without us. Events up to the latest time-stamped anchor (one whose token verifies) also carry an outside RFC 3161 time-stamp, so they cannot be altered undetected after that time-stamp. One gap stays open: events since the latest anchor are not covered until the next one, and the verification page lists the other limits. What is and isn't deployed →
A pre-reasoned Art 35 starter your DPO can work from: the DPIA for drone overwatch →
03 How this would reach your service
Through your existing suppliers, a framework or your own market engagement, not a direct approach from us.
01 Inside a supplier you already use
Warden is designed to travel inside the offering of a company that already supplies your drones, docks, pilot training or safety assurance, so it would reach you through a relationship you already have. How that would work →
02 Through a framework
Where a framework your service already uses covers this kind of software, that is the route. Warden is not yet a registered company, so it cannot join one today.
03 In answer to your own market engagement
If your service publishes a market-engagement notice on drone governance or audit, Warden would respond to it on your terms and your timetable.
04 The groundwork is public now
The starter DPIA, the governance model and the verification design are published, free to read whether or not Warden ever reaches your service.
04 What changes, and what doesn't
Unchanged Your drones & your pilots
Your service's aircraft, remote pilots, suppliers and Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) permissions stay exactly where they are today. Warden sends no command to the aircraft.
Added The authorisation & the record
A named person's authorisation recorded before launch, the incident commander's live picture, a starter DPIA your data protection officer completes and owns, and a hash-chained record of each decision. No real aircraft has been connected yet, and there is no DJI or dock integration.
05 What Warden is not
Stated plainly, so nobody is left guessing.
Not A drone or a flight service
We don't build, sell or fly aircraft, and we hold no Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) authorisation. Your service flies its own drones; Warden sits downstream and has no function that sends anything to the aircraft.
Not A finished product
No live deployment, no customer, no pilot project, and not yet a registered company. Parts of the system are built but not yet in production. All of it is listed on the status page.
Warden is not asking your service to take it on directly. If drone-as-first-responder is on your roadmap, or you've already stalled on the data-protection case, the route is through a supplier you already use, a framework, or a market-engagement notice your service publishes. The starter DPIA is free to read now, and questions about how it works are welcome at joe@wardendfr.com. Or see the console first: open the console demo (synthetic data).