Discussion: Using Drones to Aid in Mapping

I have been informed that our local fire district has received a grant to purchase some drones and the appropriate software to produce a detailed map of the district. This includes several parks and other areas that would be great places to orienteer.

Does anyone have experience with this technology and can it be used to reduce the amount of field checking that is required to produce a high quality orienteering map?

I am assuming they are using LiDAR and high resolution aerial orthography.

Depending on the setup and the time of year, yes. Since they're making maps, I presume the setup is good.

I haven't used it, but there is an open source project called OpenDroneMapper (ODM) that might be of interest. Most likely pipeline would be to use ODM to generate assets which then run through QGIS or similar software to generate geo-referenced templates and importables for Open Orienteering Mapper or OCAD.

https://docs.opendronemap.org/

For parks and similarly mostly open areas, a plain photo drone can actually deliver excellent base material. I held an online mapping workshop for mostly Croatian mappers, plus a few from neighboring countries. They did not have any domestic LiDAR but I got a sample from one of the organizers, the dense photo cloud they had generated during a 30-min flight over a local park was sufficient for a very nice sprint map. The cost is/was at least an order of magnitude less than LiDAR.

I have used a DJI phantom 4 pro drone to create a photogrammetry BaseMap for some orienteering maps in both Ky and TN. Normally it depends on the park being used but the results have been extremely helpful for creating maps.

There were some presentations on this topic at the International Conference on Orienteering Mapping 2020


https://orienteering.sport/iof/mapping/internation...

I have a Dji Mini (1). I fly it about 300' above ground in a ladder pattern taking a time lapse with a photo interval of 3 seconds. I use the DJI software and the images to get about 50% overlap between each picture (I'm never too careful, just kind of use the force). I take the images home, dump them in WebODM, and it auto-magically creates a ortho that is damn useful when there is no recent imagery. Keep in mind, this takes awhile and you might have to do it twice. But there are certainly situations where it is worth the time. For $500, it is a pretty great mapping tool. Also fun just to fly around too.

So I assume their setup is even more useful than my little toy setup.