How Drones Can Optimize Surveying and Mapping Projects
By: Eric Van Rees
Tags: Mapping, Drone Mapping, Drone Survey, Drones, Geospatial

When commercial drones were first introduced, the geospatial industry immediately adopted them. Equipped with different types of sensors and cameras, drones were turned into flying data collection devices. It soon became obvious that drones could optimize workflows, improve safety, project results and realize considerable cost savings. The following examples show how geospatial companies are using drones in different verticals that use geospatial data.

Mapping and Surveying

UAV’s can ease the work of terrestrial surveying projects greatly, for example in dangerous areas where landslides and earthquakes are common. An example of this is a mapping project in Papua New Guinea, carried out by Survey & Design, a survey firm in North Queensland, Australia. Using UAV for topographic site surveying, the team was able to save time and improve safety: the surveyors didn’t need to enter risky areas and set up any surveying equipment there. Using advanced sensors, the data accuracy was as good, if not better, than using traditional surveying methods.

While drones certainly have changed the mapping and surveying industry, cost savings, efficiency and safety gains require good preparation and only apply to the right audience: surveying companies looking to work smarter, meaning doing more with less. While drones have proven to be an excellent way to do more with less, surveying companies first have to invest before they’re able to see any financial benefits. For example, up-front investments can be significant in training in order to be able to operate UAV’s, and a complete UAV system (not just a drone, but a whole set of both hardware and software tools) that produces the required deliverable.

Mining

For years, mapping and surveying companies had to rely on airborne photography when mapping open pit mines. But airborne photography proved to be expensive, as airborne mapping projects usually cover large areas in order to be profitable. Drones proved to be a great alternative for small-scale mapping areas such as open pit mines. In addition to this, they are able to map areas that are unsafe and inaccessible for humans.

The same can be said of using traditional land surveying equipment in mines, which is problematic, but not so using UAV’s equipped with airborne cameras. Leica Geosystems offers an autonomously flying hexacopter called the Aibot X6 that can be used for geospatial data products such as orthophotos (geometrically corrected aerial images), 3D models and point clouds (sets of data points in space, containing an x, y and z coordinate). Apart from mapping purposes, ongoing work in open pit mines can be monitored using UAV’s, for example stockpile, muck pile monitoring and analysis, as well as plant, equipment and highwall inspections.

Agriculture

Digital agriculture is another market where drone technology is applied more and more. Pix4D is a mapping software company that builds solutions using drones, drone imagery and photogrammetry techniques that help farmers manage and monitor their crops. For example, timely and high-resolution drone maps help farmers to scout crop issues, whereas vegetation index maps help them to understand a plant’s stress. Detailed digital surface models helps farmers to plan irrigation, structure fields to minimize soil erosion, while aerial imagery from drones can be used to validate insurance claims.

And this is only the beginning: new agriculture applications are being developed constantly. A great help will be the creation of detailed time-series, which is in itself an incentive for collecting more data using drones. Last year, Pix4D ran a joint project that involved the acquisition of precise and measurable maps that helped to understand crop changes over time and different input applications. Drone data of several trial sites was collected over time, so that different sets could be produced, analyzed and compared over time. This helped the stakeholders to understand the impact of different agricultural techniques over the crops.

Energy

Inspection of powerlines is an important use case for drones. The energy industry has turned away from using helicopters and ground operations in order to automate expensive and time-consuming grid surveys, as well improve safety, data management and reducing the environmental impact. Delair-Tech, an end-to-end drone solution provider that is active in many different industries, claims that drones are 30 to 40 per cent more cost effective than using helicopters for powerlines inspection work, while long-range drones might save energy companies up two 2.5 million Euros per year.