FIVE REASONS TO CHOOSE AERIAL SURVEYING
Aerial Survey is a form of collecting geographical information using airborne vehicles. The collection of information can be made using different technologies such as aerial photography, remote sensing imagery, helicopters, drones and other UAVs.
Simply put, it is a surveysurvey made from above, as from an aircraft, a high point, etc. a survey that maps an area by means of aerial photography, photogrammetry, etc.
The information collected needs to be georeferenced in order to be useful. The georeferencing of information is usually done using GNSS with similar techniques as the techniques used for dynamic land surveying.
- Precision: Frequent improvements in UAV and camera technology over the past decade, has enabled drones to utilise cameras that can shoot up to 5.2k resolution images and videos over heights up to a thousand metres and more.
- Accessibility: This is perhaps the best advantage, no height is too high and no terrain is too large to be surveyed using aerial means, like aircrafts and drones. Buildings like skyscrapers and vast acres of farmland and desert can be surveyed using this means.
- Cost savings: Thanks to the relative affordability and increasingly accurate output of aerial survey drones, today’s surveying professionals can carry out data capturing without huge costs, operational or logistic considerations.
- Speed: Airborne vehicles are known to possess twice the speed of their land counterparts and this helps during surveying which is why many opt for aerial surveying as it saves time and employs minimal effort with maximum and accurate effect and readings. Very large areas can be covered in a short amount of time.
- Health & Safety: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles UAVs like drones can be piloted to go through long distances and soaring heights into regions that may be considered dangerous, thereby posing minimum safety risk to the professional who doesn’t have to be in such close proximity to capture data.
Aerial surveys can be a useful tool to the planner. Satellite imagery and very high flight aerial photography reveal land use patterns useful in regional planning. Periodic small scale photography of urban areas shows urban and suburban growth patterns which can be useful for urban, regional and housing planning for better community development.
