As technology in general advances, it’s applicability in civil areas rises which is often caused by an increased accessibility accompanied by reduced prices. Among the most outstanding technological developments of the past decade the rise of unmanned systems or “drones” is determined to bring huge potentials to safety inspections and thus accident prevention. Their application in sensible infrastructures is introduced by this contribution on the example of port facilities. Ports belong to the most secured infrastructures since the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and are part of a nation’s key infrastructure with nowadays over 80% of goods being transported via marmite supply chains. Those aspects and their 24/7 operation status of multiple transport lines put a high demand on continuous safety measurements, predictive maintenance and gapless inspections. Where industrial climber or diver operated in the past under challenging and risky conditions in order to provide inspection data, unmanned systems will provide equal or even superior services. Those systems are unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) e.g. for container crane inspections or even Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROV) e.g. for underwater inspections of quays. Combined with the right sensor payload, these systems already surpass human perception on inspection tasks by using 4K visual-, thermal- infra red-, sonar-, lidar- and many more systems. This contribution builds up on already introduced qualitative frameworks by the author on how to use unmanned systems in ports by providing initial quantitative data on real world applications. The underlying methodology adapts the widely accepted action research methodology for innovative, applied evaluations in practical business settings. This study contributes to the existing literature by clearing the path for future research and by providing a valuable quantitative basis for other studies on safety inspection and accident prevention of other (non-maritime) critical infrastructures.