DRONES!WHEN, WHERE, AND HOW TO USE THEM FOR ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEM SOLVING

TODAY’S FLIGHT PLAN

• Industry trends

• Regulations surrounding drones

• Considerations for drone usage,

• Basic drone science,

• Case studies examples;

• And a brief flight demonstration (weather

permitting)

FAA REGULATIONS

• Certified Remote Pilots can fly unmanned aircraft systems (UAS or drones) that are <55 lbs. commercially

• Daylight operations only

• May not operate over persons

• Maximum altitude of 400 feet

• Weather restrictions

• Speed restrictions

• Airspace restrictions

• Visual line-of-sight

AIRSPACE

VISUAL LINE OF SIGHT

2016 2017 2018-2019

2016 2017 2018-2019 ???

Helping environmental managers understand and

monitor what is happening on their land so they can

make informed decisions

INTRODUCING

GALAGO

OUR

STORY

✓ Global design solution leaders

✓ 15,000 employees

✓ Interdisciplinary networks

✓ More than 2,000 scientist and engineers

in US

INTRODUCING

RAMBOLL

✓ Develop future technologies to help today’s problems

✓ Startup innovation with corporate rigor

GALAGO WAS

BORN

Chris Bowles

Director

Mike Rawitch

Operations Manager

THERE ARE KEY

CHALLENGES

Generating understanding and monitoring land is

• Expensive

• Manual

• Inherently inaccurate

• Difficult to track over time

• Easy to misportray risks until they become problems

SO… DRONES?

Drones are a valuable data collection tool….

But are not a "catch all"

• One-time view

• Limited by regulations

• Lack sector expertise

• Unstructured data

• Produce "oceans of data"

DATA SILOS

MISS RISKS

Drone solutions often miss the bigger picture

• Quantifiable revegetation rates

• Invasive species

encroachment

• Indicators of vegetative

stress

• Environmental and human risks

• Regulatory requirements

Aerial access

(Drones/Satellite)

Domain knowledge

Site intelligence

at scale

POWER COMES

IN

COMBINATION

DRONE SCIENCE

SPECTRAL RESOLUTION

SPECTRAL RESOLUTION

Conceptual Graph

Conceptual Graph

Conceptual Graph

Conceptual Graph

HOW CAN DRONE DATA HELP?VEGETATION

SPATIAL RESOLUTION

SPATIAL RESOLUTION

TEMPORAL RESOLUTION

GROUND CONTROL POINTS

CHANGE-OVER-TIME

1. OBJECTIVES

• Understand your environmental,

commercial, or regulatory objectives

• What do you need to

know? Why? How? When?

1. OBJECTIVES

• Understand your environmental,

commercial, or regulatory objectives

• What do you need to

know? Why? How? When?

2. MAP YOUR

ENTIRE SITE

• Satellite imagery; color-infrared,

hyperspectral, stereographic elevations

• Drone-based imagery; LiDAR,

photogrammetric, color-infrared, thermal

3. DATA

PIPELINE

• "Oceans of Data"

• Quickly manipulate

large datasets

• Network of virtual machines

• Cloud-based image processing

4.

DIGITIZATION

AI + Human intelligence

• Vegetation stress

• Plant or land-cover types

• Risks

• Signs of contamination

5. MONITORING

Show how your land is changing

• Provide a view of how land is tracking over time

• Change-over-time

6. ON-DEMAND

INTELLIGENCE

Our online system tracks your land and

tells you what you need to know, when you need to know it

• Automated reporting

• Collaborative environment

CASE STUDY #1

SUPERFUND MINE SITE

CASE STUDY #4

ROAD NETWORK MONITORING

CASE STUDY

EXAMPLES

CASE STUDY #2

VEGETATION MONITORING

CASE STUDY #3

ROAD NETWORK MONITORING

SUPERFUND MINE CASE

STUDYMine Feature Identification

• Gains

HOW CAN DRONE DATA HELP?ASSET IDENTIFICATION

MOBILE DATA COLLECTION

45

Web map enabled for

offline useiPad with Collector Desktop GIS

ACCESS

VEGETATION RECLAMATION CASE STUDY

Invasive Species and Vegetative Cover

CHALLENGE

• Monitor 7,000+ acres

• Vegetative cover

• Invasive species

SOLUTION

• Pilot Study

• Very-high resolution multispectral imagery data

• Developed customized algorithm and

reporting tools

RESULTS

• Rapid site assessment

• Results appear highly-accurate

• Comparison with

ground-truth pending

RESULTS

• Percentage vegetative

canopy cover

• Repeatable

• Quantitative change-

over-time analysis

CHALLENGE

• Invasive species

• Cheatgrass shown as “reddish brown”

• Quantitative change-

over-time analysis

SOLUTION/RESULTS

• Location and amount

identified

• Planning tool in development

• Documentation of remedial action

HIGHWAYSENGLAND

CASE STUDYRoad network land cover

monitoring

CHALLENGE

• Monitor habitat and

land cover change along national highway network

• Develop a “intelligent environmental estate” for Highways England

SOLUTION

• Feasibility Study

• Use readily available satellite imagery with high temporal

coverage

• Developed customized

data processing and modeling pipeline

RESULTS

• Accurate land cover

classification

• Methodology that can be repeated annually

for change analysis

CONTINUING WORK

• Network-wide habitat

change tracking

• Invasive species monitoring

• Object detection from street-view car

cameras

NEXT STEPS

Challenges

• “Oceans of data”

• Data analysis

• Making actionable

• More than pretty pictures

• Requires interdisciplinary science

Opportunities

• “…making maps that we’ve never been able to make before…”

• Significant improvement in efficiencies over older jobs

• Unlocking a digital future

DISCUSSION

mrawitch@ramboll.com