GeoPro takes pride in taking the extra steps to provide dependable and accurate data that is uncommon in the drone mapping industry. 

 

Main areas that we go above and beyond the standard:

• Ground control points (GCP)

• Post-processing in-house

• Digital Surface Model (DSM) clean-up to remove unwanted artifacts such as buildings, vehicles, equipment, conveyor belts, contours on water, etc.

• Attention to detail

 

There is obviously a lot of hype in the Surveying and Engineering community about drones and what they can do. With all the hype comes a lot of rogue drone service providers that offer services and data that is subpar with little knowledge of this to the client.  With our Land Surveying education, surveying work experience and mining work experience over the past 18 years we know what the industries need for quality data. The workflows we use on each mapping flight take longer than the typical drone service provider because we take the time to set ground control and checkpoints across the mapping area with a survey-grade RTK GPS to georeference the data.  This georeferenced data is tied to real world X,Y,Z coordinate values and is placed in a coordinate system that is currently used by the client in their CAD program. The final deliverables are basically a drag and drop into their CAD software for analysis and calculations.

 

The ground control is important for accurate, scalable final data but a post-processing software also needs to be used to accurately identify the ground control and provide DSM cleanup. All of our flight images are post-processed in house with a specialized Structure from Motion (SfM) photogrammetry software. We are not using a third party contracted system or an online app-based solution. With this, we have full control over the post-processing steps, DSM, DTM, and orthorectified final mosaic image. Adding ground control to the processing allows us to place the data into real-world coordinate values, remove image distortion and scale the project accordingly. The next step is to clean up the DSM and provide the client with DTM bare earth contours. This step is very uncommon in the industry because it is time-consuming and a lot of drone service providers are using contracted systems or app-based processing software which does not offer any human interaction (at this point). This step removes any unwanted artifacts, which is a result of SfM photogrammetry, such as buildings, vehicles, equipment, conveyor belts, contours on water, etc. This final DTM can be immediately used by the client for analysis and calculations without needing to “clean up” the data or factor for these artifacts.