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Data processing services to the public

Luke Wijnberg

Much of our time at 3DroneMapping is spent in office, processing data. We have worked with terabytes of information over the years, seen the development and evolution of software, hardware and the general end requirements of our clients. Because we have been in the industry for such a long time, we have gained valuable experience and have a solid understand of photogrammetry and GIS routines.

Much of our time at 3DroneMapping is spent in office, processing data. We have worked with terabytes of information over the years, seen the development and evolution of software, hardware and the general end requirements of our clients. Because we have been in the industry for such a long time, we have gained valuable experience and have a solid understand of photogrammetry and GIS routines.

Finding the right software to undertake photogrammetry routines is very difficult. It takes months to evaluate the limitations and highlights of the software. This often comes at a cost as the software needs to be purchased, researched and finally "data driven". The financial cost as well as time spent on this is very taxing. What we have found is that there is no single offering or suite available that can provide the best option for all cases. Especially when dealing with high accuracy data, the "all-in-one" bundles don't come close to matching the accuracy and end result that a few good ones do.

Aerial triangulation is best handled by dedicated software. The same goes for orthomosaic generation, pointcloud editing, data conversion and projection. We also know that there is no single setting or procedure for all datasets. Each project has been captured differently in terms of sensor type, topography, terrain, altitude and flight planning. Operators need to be aware of these variances and using experience, apply the model that bests suits the data.

Pointcloud editing is possibly the most important aspect of our work. Here we use interactive tools to determine ground levels, vegetation, buildings, roads. This is known as classification and is crucial when creating a DTM (Digital Terrain Model). DTM is limited to the terrain points only, thus when contours are generated, they are representative of the natural ground levels and exclude features like vegetation, buildings, etc. This is a very time consuming process and requires operators to interactively interrogate the data in 3D to check and edit classifications.

Pointcloud editing is possibly the most important aspect of our work. Here we use interactive tools to determine ground levels, vegetation, buildings, roads. This is known as classification and is crucial when creating a DTM (Digital Terrain Model). DTM is limited to the terrain points only, thus when contours are generated, they are representative of the natural ground levels and exclude features like vegetation, buildings, etc. This is a very time consuming process and requires operators to interactively interrogate the data in 3D to check and edit classifications.

3DroneMapping is now offering our experience, hardware and software capabilities to the public. Clients are now find it easier in some circumstances to collect the data themselves but ask us to process the data for them into orthomosaics, classified pointclouds, etc. Often the client has time restrictions, or inadequate hardware / software to process data correctly.

Data collected by our clients often arrives via harddrive or is uploaded to our FTP site(not recommend for datasets over 100gb) and processed on one of our workstations. Final products are delivered in whatever method is convenient. A typical 1000ha rural location with 50% vegetation cover can be processed as 4cm/pixel and 0.5m vertical contours in 1.5 days.

For more information, please contact info@3dronemap.com

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