UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLE (DRONE) SURVEYING AND ASSET INSPECTION

Compass Consulting Surveyors uses Drones for various purposes, with some directly related to surveying and others more useful for asset management and visualisation purposes.

Drones are utilised for surveying the ground, particularly where the site is:

• Large
• Dangerous
• Inaccessible
• Or a combination of the above

Examples of sites that are ideal for Drone (UAV) surveys are waste management facilities, extractive industries such as quarries, construction sites, development lots, and more. Compass Consulting Surveyors use Aerial Photogrammetry to generate a digital terrain model (DTM) of a site. The DTM can then be used for design purposes, to verify progress of excavation or fill, or to compute volumes between different dates of surveys.

When a survey by drone is done, an aerial photograph of the site is also generated, called an Orthophoto. This image is a high-resolution image which is often used as background information for plans. Compass Consulting Surveyors often use an orthophoto to enhance information taken by ground survey. While they say a picture is worth a thousand words, often a single orthophoto can take a thousand images to be generated!

Compass Consulting Surveyors also use drones for asset inspections. These asset inspections may include still and video imagery of inaccessible structures, including telecommunications towers, water towers, power infrastructure, or tall buildings.

Our partner for intensive UAV projects is Morrison Aerial Robotics, a leading innovator in UAV survey techniques. Led by John Morrison, Morrison Aerial Robotics offer a top-quality service for capturing data using drones. With fully qualified pilots and various forms of UAV, Morrison Aerial Robotics are the perfect fit with Compass Consulting Surveyors.