Overview

A drone survey is the use of drones, equipped with various cameras and high-tech sensors, to capture aerial data with downward-facing sensors. During this survey, the ground is photographed many times from different angles and each image is tagged with coordinates. Drone surveying services offer huge potential to GIS professionals. With aerial mapping with drones, it is feasible to carry out topographic surveys. Trained drone pilots can quickly collect high-quality data from terrains, making the surveying process faster, more cost-effective and safer than traditional methods.

What are Drones Used for in Surveying?

Land Surveying

Drone surveying and mapping produce high-resolution orthomosaics and detailed 3D models of areas where outdated, low-quality or no data is available. So, they give high-accuracy cadastral maps even in difficult or complex environments. Topographic surveys using drones allow for accurate and efficient capturing of detailed aerial data. As a result of this, surveyors can extract features from the images, such as curbs, signs, road markers, drains, fire hydrants.

Land Management and Planning

Aerial images taken through drone land surveying simplify and accelerate topographic surveys for land management and planning. This holds true for allotment planning and design, site scouting, and the final construction of buildings, roads and utilities on construction sites. These images also lay the foundation for detailed models of site topography for pre-construction engineering studies. The generated data is also transferrable to any CAD or BIM software so that engineers can start their work immediately from a 3D model.
Since drone survey cost is low, images can be taken at regular intervals and overlaid on the original blueprints to assess whether the construction work is moving according to plan specifications.

Urban Planning

The development of increasingly complex and dense urban areas requires thorough planning, so data collection is tedious and expensive. Urban planners can collect a large amount of data in a short period of time with less number of staff. The images generated in this way allow planners to examine the existing environmental and social conditions of the sites and consider the impact of different scenarios.

Slope Monitoring

With automated GIS analysis, it is feasible to take slope measurements from DSMs and DTMs generated by drone imagery. Knowing the steepness of the ground’s surface, the areas can be divided and used for slope monitoring purposes. With orthomosaics at different times, it is feasible to detect changes in earth movement and measure its velocity. This data predict landslides and prevent potential damages to bridges, roads and railways.

Stockpile Volumetric Measurements

With 3D mapping with drone technology, surveyor can get volumetric measurements from the very same images. This quick and inexpensive method of volume measurement is useful in calculating stocks in quarries and mines for monitoring purposes. Moreover, with a drone, surveyors can collect many more topographic data points. Since drones are getting the data from the above, operations are not interrupted.