Surveys using aerial drones is increasing in popularity within the industry. Drones can be a powerful tool that can offer great commercial benefits because of their speed and efficiency. UAV’s enable us to quickly capture and transmit data to our clients, allowing us to perform drone surveys. Check out our complete guide to drone surveys.
What Is a Drone Survey?
Drone surveys are a cost-effective, time-efficient way to map from the sky. They can also provide imagery and point cloud data that we can use to extract various deliverables. UAS (Unmanned Aerial System), UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle), and UAS surveys are also used. They are both very useful and cost-effective. It doesn’t matter if a drone is used for surveying, planning, monitoring or maintaining infrastructure, it can still play an important role in any given project.
While there are many benefits to any topographical survey method, drone surveys have unique advantages over other methods. This can make the difference in whether your next project succeeds or fails. The following section will explain why drone technology is so valued in all sectors.
A Drone or UAV Survey: The Biggest Benefits
Drone surveying offers many benefits. First, drone surveying is safer and cheaper than traditional, manual techniques. Drones can survey and inspect buildings and land areas with greater accuracy than traditional methods and in a faster time frame. They are great tools for topographical survey of all types. Let’s take a look at the top benefits of drone survey.
You can save time and cut costs.
This is perhaps the most important benefit, at least for clients who need to finish projects on time and within budget. The average drone captures data five times faster that land-based methods. The software that comes with a commercial-grade drone can be used to autonomously control it, which means data can be gathered in much shorter time frames. Drones are also less labor-intensive, which reduces overhead costs for land surveyors.
Access to remote areas
Drones enable surveyors access areas previously considered inaccessible. It doesn’t matter if the area is too far away to be reached on foot, by car, or in a building that can’t be accessed by people. You can survey structures such as rooftops, utilities and the underside of bridges and railways by drone.
You can survey some areas of land by drone, including dense forestry and quarries. In these areas, traditional surveying methods can be slow. One advantage of using drones for inaccessible areas surveying is that we don’t have to close any routes to the area or interrupt anyone while we are there.
Drone surveys are extremely accurate
Advanced drones’ cameras can take many HD images at different angles and at very high quality. We can merge imagery to create 3D terrain models using the latest software. Merrett Surveys drone surveyors are able to capture such detailed and extensive data that they can consider various data deliverables like orthophoto mosaics, point cloud data, 3D BIM model, and 3D BIM. Let’s now take a look at some data deliverables that are available for drone surveying. While traditional land survey methods limit the ways in which data can be presented, drone methods open up a host of high-tech options.
What data can drone surveys collect?
Our clients work closely from the start of the project to ensure that they receive key data. However, we often have data types that they didn’t consider. There are many data deliverables we can offer our clients in drone surveys.
Building Information Modelling – Drones when used with photogrammetry software can provide a 3D visual representation to the area of land and buildings that have been surveyed. This data is crucial to achieving objectives at all stages of a project’s lifecycle.
Digital Terrain Models – After any objects (such as buildings) have been removed, you can use drone images to create DTMs.
Orthomosaic Maps: We can produce detailed, high-definition orthomosaic mapping. We combine orthophotos (smaller pictures) to produce large, high quality and map-quality imagery for the area being surveyed. Other measurements, such as horizontal distances or surface areas, may also be included.
3D Point Cloud Data – From UAV images or drone footage, densified points clouds can be produced that provide detailed geospatial information. These point clouds are extremely precise models that can be used for measuring distance, area, volume and visualisations in 3D.
Contour Lines – A DTM allows contour lines to be mapped. These contour lines give a better understanding about the area captured by the drone.
Inspection work – Remotely accessing structures, such as transmission towers, communication towers and bridges, or high walls, engineers can obtain detailed imagery to help them assess the condition of assets.
In nearly all industries, it is vital to adopt and implement new technology. Topographical surveying does not differ. Companies recovering from Covid-19 have found new technology to be of critical importance in recent years.
The Down Side
While there are many benefits to drone surveys, as you’ve seen, we need to be aware of some limitations. These are things that many companies won’t want to talk about, and they will be overlooked by amateur drone pilots who have not been trained as surveyors. As professional land surveyors, fully trained in drone surveys, our advice is always open and transparent.
Drone surveys: The drawbacks
You cannot use imagery from drones to map or’see’ the ground under dense foliage and long grass. Although it is possible to map true terrain, you will need to use a Lidar instrument that can be mounted to your drone.
High accuracy is possible but requires ground control (surveyed and certified by a surveyor), a quality camera and a’real time GPS’ installed on the drone. Note that vertical accuracy can be approximated with a pixel size of approximately 3 times. You may not have access to certain areas for flying.
The drone must stay within the pilot’s sight and no further than 500m from the drone. While it is possible to fly beyond the visual line-of-sight (BVLOS), most projects have a limit on distance due to CAA regulations. You should watch this space, this is an exciting technology that is rapidly changing.