The area of interest for this high resolution drone lidar survey was downstream of a construction site. While the project was being built, materials on site were stockpiled. Unfortunately, heavy rains washed these materials downstream of the construction site, to be deposited on private property, causing a disruption to the landowner’s use. In one case a sod farmer had less area to cultivate and in the other a cattle rancher had less grass available for grazing.
From a Microdrones blog post.
Therefore, a survey was required to assess and fully quantify the total amount of sediment deposited. Due to the size of the area, elevation changes, and unstable footing, a traditional survey would be very costly and time consuming. Additionally, to fully analyze how much sediment was in place would have required excess GPS shots using conventional methods.
Kenney and the team at Navigation Electronics decided this was a textbook case to use the new mdLiDAR1000HR aaS and see if there was enough resolution to quantify sediment deposits. “We had just taken possession of the new HR system and we also were very curious to see how it would function in this type of an environment,” said Kenney. “What we came to find is that it really soared. It just was the perfect tool for the job.”
The Workflow
Each project was conducted using the Microdrones workflow of Plan, Fly, Process and Visualize. Mission and flight preparation details, as well as the flight parameters and data acquisition will be reviewed for each flight.
Plan and Fly: 1800 acres in 3 days
There were 2 separate properties to be surveyed for this project with one area 1,200 acres and the other 600 acres. The entire 1,800 acres was flown over the course of three days and 28 flights. “We covered about 60 acres per flight and each flight was about 25 to 30 minutes,” explained Kenney. “I think the longest flight duration of all 28 flights was right at 29 minutes and 16 seconds.”
Across all 28 flights, the mdLidar1000HR aaS flew at an altitude of 50 meters, with 50% overlap at a speed of 5 meters per second leading to a point density of over 280 points per square meter.
Process and Visualize
The point cloud was created and processed through the mdInfinity software suite using the following data processing modules: Trajectory Processing, Georeferencing, and Precision Enhancement (+ noise reduction) to insure an accurate and precise point cloud. Using the mdInfinity ground classification routine, vegetation can be removed and the bare earth data can be further processed to develop digital terrain models.
For the point cloud CLICK HERE.
For the complete article on this high resolution drone lidar survey CLICK HERE.
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