Drone Survey

Recon Aerial is an aerial drone surveying company that specializes in commercial drone surveys. We provide drone surveys to landowners, engineers, and architects for power and utility planning, land-use planning, environmental surveys, earthworks, mining feature assessment, commercial development, landfill surveys, to complete as-built drawings, and for a variety of other purposes. 

Drone surveys are not meant to compete with or replace land surveys. Drone surveys are powerful and insightful planning tools. Drones are increasingly being used by landowners, developers,  architects, and planners to assess existing site conditions before site development.

Using a drone for pre-planning we can create extremely useful deliverables that are compatible with AutoCAD and other standard industry software. We can provide a geo-referenced site map, 3D point cloud/model, elevations profile, contours, and digital terrain models, and more.

These digital assets allow us and our clients to situate roads, drainage, grading, cut/fill sections, and place site features overlays within AutoCAD layers.  This is possible since the photogrammetric exports from each site provide an incredibly accurate and detailed geo-referenced overview of the site conditions.

Drone surveys enhance the existing planning/development workflow and provide professionals with the opportunity to work smarter, faster and deliver a more thorough design.

Recon Aerial conducts first conducts the aerial drone survey in full compliance with the RPAS regulations and in conformance to our internal procedures for safe, efficient drone operations.

Once the drone operations are complete and we have processed the exports we either provide the files directly to our clients OR  Recon creates the AutoCAD exports/workups specific to the clients’ development objectives. The exports we provide are either imprecise/indicative or precise in relation to the cadastral survey depending on whether we receive the land survey data (txt, XML, or other).

The drone survey itself is accurate to 2-4cm in the XYZ from 80 m (262ft) with one ground control point (GCP).

As shown above in the photogrammetry survey (map/model) another excellent use case for drone surveying is for planning and development. The map and model were created in less than 24 hrs and included 3 hr drive time, hiking and setup, 4 drone flights, and 4 hours processing time combining 1100+ images for a 40-acre property. The total area of the orthorectified map produced was approximately 162 acres and the ground sampling distance was 0.8 in/px or 2.0 cm/pix.

The purpose of the aerial drone survey in this case was to export various files from the drone mapping software including the elevations and digital terrain model into Auto-Cad for planning/development purposes. Specifically, this drone survey was conducted to submit an initial rezoning application. The client had the drone survey conducted in order to provide the documentation to the planner prior to submitting it to the municipal authorities.  The client did not want to go through the expense and time to undertake a complete land survey to submit for rezoning approval since there was a risk the rezoning would not be approved.

The output for this client is shown here as a before and after comparison. This demonstrates very clearly the strength of the drone survey as a tool for site development. We have included property lines, setbacks from high water as well as elevations on both the geo-referenced orthomosaic and digital terrain model. Now we can add site features such as buildings, docks, roads, grading, earthworks, drainage, septic systems, power corridors, etc.