Special GISCafe Report: Drones for GIS and Mapping

The FAA estimates that there will be nearly half a million registered commercial use drones in the U.S. by 2022 (FAA 2018 – 2038 Aerospace Forecast).

Drones, or UAVs or UAS, are being used in the GIS industry for such purposes as military surveillance, real estate, searching for hurricane activity, search and rescue missions, public health and safety, agriculture and in construction and countless other industries. Their size and affordability makes them a valuable choice for scientists, power companies, surveyors, military and civilians. They are also environmentally friendly and provide a low-cost option for gathering valuable data that can then be fed into a GIS.

Costs, size, and flexibility are the primary factors that separate a drone from satellite or aircraft GIS data collection.

Since drones can autonomously collect a vast range of data they are appealing to many use cases. Besides, they are light-weight and high performance. Satellite imagery has provided remote sensing data for mapping, but can often display low fidelity or limited visibility from cloud cover. High precision and accuracy can be achieved with aerial imagery, with planes equipped with high tech remote sensors. Photogrammetry, which makes use of overlapping photos to identify exact measurements between objects, can be useful for gathering accurate models.

With GIS, the system is only as good as the information you give it. Drones or UAVs have the capability of assembling a vast amount of data, but it then needs to be collected in such a way as to be useful for the type of project it will be used for. There are numerous sensors and drones to choose from, plus software limitations and regulatory requirements.

What’s on board a drone? The UAV payload is responsible for gathering the data. Applications vary so the payloads can be inferred, action, or thermal cameras, high precision barometers or multispectral, LiDAR, or hyperspectral sensors.

We spoke with a number of organizations that either produce or use drones for analytics in their business to find out what the important factors are of drone use in various industries that use GIS mapping.

Drones and Supporting Technologies

Septentrio Mosaic

Gustavo Lopez, market access manager for Septentrio says that Septentrio does not produce drones, However, it produces GNSS receivers which are used within multiple drone platforms in the market.

“Septentrio’s customers in the UAV market do make different type of drones and a large proportion of these are used for aerial imagery,” says Lopez. “Other use cases include inspection, delivery, mining and others where reliability of real time positioning and orientation are needed.”

“Our RiCOPTER UAV platform with a maximum take-off mass up to 25kg is mainly used for acquiring LiDAR data by use of RIEGLs VUX-1UAV laser scanner and dedicated INS/GNSS system with optional cameras available as a fully integrated turnkey solution,” says Philipp Amon, manager Unmanned Laser Scanning Business Division at RIEGL Laser Measurement Systems.

RIEGL Laser Measurement Systems

“The platform and sensor payload can be used for various applications, such as Agriculture and Forestry, Archaeology and Cultural Heritage Documentation, Corridor Mapping, Open-Cast Mining and many more.”

GeoDecisions offers drone services for its clients, including aerial imagery derived from drones to support project planning, execution, and maintenance.

Among the companies that don’t manufacture drones, SolSpec has developed an aerial data geoprocessing platform and suite of industry specific analytics for Energy and Civil engineering that transform data into actionable risk analysis and predictive modeling to identify, measure and mitigate potential hazards related to pipeline right-of-ways (ROWs), construction projects, and other ground-based operations.  SolSpec uses aerial imagery and other raw data, like LiDAR, as a foundation for providing high fidelity data insights. Using statistically significant analytics on high resolution unmanned and manned aircraft imagery, SolSpec transforms data into intelligence to inform important decisions. For example, SolSpec’s problematic hydrology solution shows clients where Best Management Practices (BMPs), like water bars or culverts, are failing. Drones, micro-satellites an

With SolSpec, know where problematic surface hydrology channeling so that you can fix it before it causes a soil movement issue.

d manned aircraft are changing the way operators are able to understand energy and civil projects; however, the real impact is coming from more distilled accuracy of identifying and monitoring risk areas on large land projects.

vHive is another firm that doesn’t manufacture drones but provides an enterprise drone hive software solution.

vHive is the global software provider to enterprises, accelerating their continuous digital transformation, enabling them to make better decisions based on accurate field data and analytics. vHive is the only software solution that enables enterprises to deploy autonomous drone hives to digitize their field assets and operations. vHive is making an impact in a variety of industries including communication towers, construction, insurance and rail by dramatically cutting operational costs, generating new revenue opportunities and boosting employee safety.

Pros and Cons of Drones

The pros and cons of using drones as opposed to using satellite or aircraft to collect data is well outlined by these vendors.

A huge plus for drones is high, global availability and no need for substantial Capex investments, says Sharon Imber, CMO of vHive. Other factors include:

• Operation with minimal training required, resulting in high-resolution imagery that can be inspected, monitored and providing actionable business insights.
• Reduce costs: Autonomous drones decrease the number of people required onsite, shortens the inspection time to less than an hour and removes the need to revisit the site for missing data. Office time is streamlined through automated 3D reconstruction, precise measurement tools, annotation, tagging and report generation.

“UAVs are a proven game changer for small-scaled areas and are very cost effective in terms of operational costs,” says Amon of RIEGL. “Deploying a UAV with a LiDAR sensor payload can be done in rather short time acquiring data for typical 30 minutes by multi-rotor UAV. Traditional photogrammetry is not able to penetrate through vegetation which LiDAR does and is in most cases the major deliverable for the end-client. “

Septentrio’s Lopez says deploying drones is ideal when data collection needs to be done often and is also handy when used in smaller areas. “Large areas will be better served by aircraft or satellite imagery. Drones have proven to be quite efficient for mapping purposes and its deployment into larger areas is also becoming a reality thanks to BVLOS evolutions in legislation and technology.”

Katrina Engelsted, Geospatial Web Developer, SolSpec, Inc., says that drones can be spun up quickly. “If you have a team of trained pilots, then you can quickly send them out to fly projects after significant rain events, severe weather, or other emergencies. Drone imagery gives you an assessment of your site in near real time.

Aircraft is comparable to drones when it comes to responsiveness. Some sensors on aircraft, like LiDAR, can provide greater insight; traditionally, LiDAR has taken months to process though and so it is resource intensive and expensive. SolSpec reduces processing time from weeks to days and adds analytics on top of it so you get specific, statistically significant answers sooner.”

Englested notes that one of the weaknesses of drone imagery is its accuracy.  Without ground control points, it is difficult to compare imagery sets to one another because there could be offset or drift from flight to flight. LiDAR helps to supplement imagery by providing precise, three-dimensional information about the shape of the Earth and its surface characteristics.

A quick short summary of examples include:

Drone Pros

• High resolution
• Cloud coverage
• Higher fidelity
• Responsive
• Hard terrain to access

Drone Cons

• Inexperienced pilots
• Resources and training
• Line of sight
• Not as accurate without ground truth points

Sean Burke, Geospatial Database Designer/Programmer at GeoDecisions says that using a drone to collect aerial imagery offers many advantages to traditional aerial imagery collection methods, including:

• It allows the client to obtain real-time aerial imagery on a project at a lower cost than an airplane or satellite.
• While aircraft and satellites can collect macro-level imagery over large regions, drones can collect micro imagery pertinent to the project area.
• Satellites only provide aerial imagery every one to three years, and sometimes even longer in rural areas. Due to this lapse, imagery is not always representative of the current state of an area. By using a drone, a user can fly, process, and integrate data into a geographic information system (GIS) in the same day.
• Regarding licensing, acquiring a Part 107 Federal Aviation UAS License requires considerably less time and money than a traditional pilot’s license. A drone pilot’s license can be obtained for $150 and a few days of study.

Cost Savings with Drones

“We believe that end users can save 2 to 3 times in costs of what traditional survey mapping would do. However it will depend on the type of job,” says Lopez of Septentrio.

For planning and routing projects, some companies use consumer mapping applications with outdated and low resolution satellite imagery. Alternatively, deploying patrolled flights is expensive.

Drones and UAVs have emerged as a key process improvement for pipeline inspection.  But it doesn’t stop at monitoring and mapping. “At SolSpec, we’re leveraging the power of the cloud, ultra-high spatial resolution aerial imagery, AI and machine learning and big data to open up new opportunities to transform pipeline integrity management to a more proactive approach to help reduce risk and accelerate time to value.”

Perhaps one of the most clear examples is this one from Sean Burke at GeoDecisions: “I remember a project I encountered early in my career, before the innovation of drones. I was working in the GIS field, and the client’s study and mitigation costs were directly tied to the forested acreage in the project area. The standard procedure was to use aerial imagery to classify forested lands. Unfortunately, the most recent imagery available for that rural area was several years old and didn’t reflect the current forested state of the project area. That company elected to have a plane fly that area to capture the imagery. With today’s technology, this flight could have been performed in a day by a single person acquiring a drone.”

Different Drones for Different Data Collection

There are several drones versatile enough to do a little bit of everything, according to Burke at GeoDecisions. The most common drones are the prosumer quadcopters, such as the DJI Mavic series or the DJI Phantom series. vHive also employs these drones. Both of these drones can be purchased for reasonable prices and can perform many of the same functions as higher-end drones. High-end drones usually have increased capabilities in:

• Camera resolution.
• GPS accuracy -Drones can be equipped with onboard real-time kinematic (RTK) capabilities.
• Extended flight time/battery for larger coverage areas.
• Transmission range

Fixed-wing drones look like small airplanes and can cover larger areas with longer flight times, but lack the maneuverability and turn radius of the quadcopters.

Drones for agriculture will have different payload than mapping or inspection drones, says Lopez of Septentrio. Mapping drones will require a high resolution camera to allow proper high quality image stitching. Spectral cameras are used in mapping drones used in agriculture.

“There are 2 main types of drones: fixed wing and multi-rotor,” Lopez notes. “Both types of drones are applicable for the different jobs however fixed wing drones are mainly used for mapping, considering they are more efficient on flight time and speed.

Surely newer use drones are being created combining the advantages of fixed wing with multirotor (VTOL). These drones are mainly being used for mapping.”

Drones can also be differentiated with sensors: RGB, LiDAR, thermal, SAR as well as manned versus unmanned, according to SolSpec’s Engelsted.

“Under the synonym UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle), UAS (Unmanned Aerial System) and RPAS (Remotely Piloted Aircraft System) multiple platforms can be used such as the classical multirotor (quad-, hexa- or octocopter), fixed-wing, VTOL and helicopter platform,” says Amon. “They vary in acquisition speed, flight altitude, area coverage and resulting point density and GSD (ground sampling distance). The right choice of the platform also depends on the national regulations, MTOM (maximum take-off mass) and capabilities to fly BLOS (Beyond Line-of-Sight).”   

Using Drones and Satellite or Aerial Imagery Together for GIS Data Collection

“Boots on the ground is the most common method for inspection and monitoring large land projects. This is resource-intensive, dangerous and time consuming. Aerial imagery and analytics is the future of inspections as it provides targeted, prioritized monitoring that reduces time in the field and safety of field workers,” says Englesed of SolSpec. SolSpec identified where the soil/slope movements and BMP failures were and was able to reduce the focus areas of inspections from 80% to 12% of the Right-of-Way.  “Our models provide a two-tiered analysis: assessment (what is happening on the ground now) and prediction (how the current conditions impact the risk index for any given area on site).”

“Some of the end drone customers have both type of platforms (fixed wing and multi-rotor) and are using them for mapping,” Lopez reports. “GIS is derived in some cases automatically thanks to artificial intelligence (AI), capable of detecting objects in pictures and thus creating attribute data which can be attached to a specific element in a picture.”

Cameras and Sensors Used in Drones for GIS Data Collection

“Automation is great and a well driven multiplier to carry out as many missions as possible,” explains Amon of RIEGL. “Still, the human is planning, uploading and executing the mission. In addition, the pilot in charge is responsible for the safe execution of the survey mission and all preparations before the actual flight takes place.”

“Cameras are the main component we see being used in larger volume. Lidar is being used to also create more accurate cloud points and will become more accessible,” says Lopez of Septentrio.

While traditional red, green, blue (RGB) cameras can provide a great deal of functionality using photogrammetric methods, drones can be equipped with many different types of sensors that perform different tasks, according to Burke at GeoDecisions. “For example, infrared and thermal sensors allow the eye to see changes in temperature or gas emission through a spectrum of colors. This technology has been utilized in search and rescue, building inspection, leak detection, and many others. Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) imaging can be used to display crop health. Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) equipped drones scan an area and produce high accuracy, detailed representations of the earth’s surface that can be used in land surveying, power line inspections, or tree canopy studies.”

Reducing Human Error with the Automation of Drones

“Automation can surely reduce human error and moreover provide more data than what can be done manually. As an example you can obtain 3D or spectral imagery which will allow you to interpret the data in a better way,” says Septentrio’s Lopez.

According to Imber of vHive, drones are a perfect solution in solving the 4Ds of inspections problems:

• Dull: tediously acquiring large amounts of repetitive data
• Difficult: Capturing data this is simply unreachable by humans from a birds eye view.
• Dangerous: covering high assets such as towers, structures, bridges or any place that risks human lives.
• Dirty: going to contaminated areas that are not suitable for people.
  Guaranteeing safety by using autonomous drones decreases the risk for employee injuries to 0%.

“Aerial inspection can produce more accurate results but to be clear, drones are not out to replace the expertise of field inspections but rather augment the practice and help inspectors be more accurate, productive and efficient.,” says Englested of SolSpec.  Automated inspections, particularly in remote, rugged areas also help improve safety for field workers. Additionally, being able to view a project status from the office enables better allocation of resources and workers; therefore, saving time and money.”

Summing this up, Burke says automation does not eliminate the risk of error, but can significantly reduce it. Humans are susceptible to many outside environment variables such as stress, fatigue, or distraction. Any of these factors can adversely impact an operation.

“In repeatable tasks, automation increases the validity of results as a process can be performed in the same manner several times over. The automation of flight is an important tool in collecting aerial imagery because it can calculate the proper number of photos, coverage, altitude, and flight path for a project and programmatically fly the drone and take photos. It allows for an element of precision that would take a human considerably longer to achieve.

For site monitoring progress, one can run the same flight path over a construction site several times throughout the project, producing a model of the same area each time. The introduction of obstacle avoidance sensors on drones has reduced the number of collisions with trees or objects considerably. This can allow a user to inspect objects at close detail with higher confidence than drones without obstacle avoidance.”

What a Drone Can Do that Satellites or Aircraft Can’t

“By choosing the flight parameter, the resulting point density and GSD can be chosen based on the requirements,” says Amon from RIEGL. “Flying lower in altitude and reduce flight speed provide a higher resolution of the point cloud and camera.”

“The size and portability of a drone allow users to move from site to site to capture project data and allow for data capture at the micro-level,” Burke says. “Since the drone flies at or below 400 feet, it also provides greater detail compared to airplanes or satellites that fly much higher. An airplane would also have to be flown from a hangar to the project site and back to capture imagery, adding to the project cost. A drone can be carried and deployed to a project site in a vehicle or backpack and used without restriction. I have a drone that I carry with me hiking in my backpack that allows me to take photos from even remote places.”

Chances of Data Overload

SolSpec is working to solve the problem of data overload. “As drones have pushed into commercial space and barriers to use are coming down, there is undoubtedly risk of data overload, redundant data collection and difficulty with data sharing,” says Imber. “Like LiDAR collection, drone imagery collects hundreds of megabytes of data. This data is hard to manage, storage and organize because it’s so big. We are helping customers process, store and manage added value data on top of the raw data collection.  We’re focused on making data actionable — empowering the energy and civil engineering industry to answer questions that solve real-life industry problems effectively and efficiently.”

“LiDAR sensors provide higher scan rates at centimeter-level precision, getting smaller and lighter while offering the possibility to integrated different other sensors like hyperspectral, multispectral and thermal cameras – the possibilities are rather endless,” says Amon of RIEGL. “On the other side, UAV platforms provide higher endurance with the capability of carrying more and heavier sensor loads.”

“Most of the limitations today are on battery consumption and not on overload of data,” says Lopez of Septentrio. “The only type of drones which generate massive data would be drones with Lidar data where a large amounts of points are generated. But despite the larger amount of data still we have not seen major limitations on data overload.”

“There is no fear of data overload, the idea behind multiple autonomous drones is to utilize each mission by enabling each drone to collaborate with others and to be the most efficient in the field by maximizing the object of interest survey into multiple parts.” Says Sharon Imber of vHive.

FAA Rules for Unmanned Aircraft Systems

FAA rules include numerous priorities. Here are some of the primary ones for commercial drones:

1. Do not fly over people
2. Do not fly over 400 feet
3. Do not fly in controlled airspace without authorization
4. Do not fly at night
5. Always fly with the drone within your visual line of sight
6. Do not fly your drone over any emergency or rescue operations.

As technology advances, the FAA has shown a willingness to work with drone users to allow operations in what were once prohibited areas. The FAA has instituted Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability (LAANC), which allows for automated airspace authorizations between a drone user and air traffic control at many of our nation’s airports. Pilots can obtain waivers for many of these regulations through the FAA, and the FAA has proposed allowing night flight and flight over people in upcoming years.

Advice for Potential Drone Customers 

Lopez advises that customers make sure that the drone solution also includes some automation in the feature extraction of visual imagery. This will help to reduce efforts on GIS data generation.

After the preliminary adoption wave of drones by enterprises, the next important question becomes how to achieve enterprise scale, says Imber of vHive.

Enterprises should be looking for scalable drone platforms with the following attributes:

• Autonomous flight:  drones should not be flown manually. Manual flight requires expert pilots who are expansive and few. Manual pilots also generate inconsistent data from pilot to pilot and from survey to survey.  Scalable solutions enable drones to be controlled by software, easily operated by non-expert field personnel.
• Flying a hive of autonomous drones: the ability to scale beyond a single drone directly shortens the enterprise’s data lifecycle from acquisition to actionable insights. This means that companies can reduce the time to value in getting relevant information and results.
• Low Capex requirements: the ability to use off-the-shelf, low-cost drones, rather than proprietary and expensive equipment.
• Ability to handle different use cases: many enterprises have a variety of field assets. Take for example a rail company that owns tracks, rail yards, bridges and communication towers. Such companies need a solution that flexibly surveys vertical, horizontal and broad area assets automatically with little to no intervention from the user.
• Effectively manage large amounts of data: drones capture gigabytes and terabytes of high-resolution imagery. A good solution needs to enable users to access data, analyze it, share it and translate it into operational tasks and business insights.
• Interoperability with other enterprise IT systems: creating a holistic and coherent view of all information about enterprise assets by exchanging information with other systems such as operations systems, inventory and asset management systems and billing and budget systems.

GeoDecisions

RIEGL USA

Septentrio

SolSpec

vHive

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