Sky West Flights

On a construction site, there is always a contractor, an engineering company, an earthmoving company and a number of subcontractors to execute specialized work. In addition to involving a lot of teams, deadlines are tight and require frequently-updated records to drive decisions and align multiple stakeholders.

This is where a major advantage of drones lies for construction site managers. Drones provide a complete picture of the construction site on-demand and within a few hours

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in 2023 a drone is mainly used in the construction industry for surveying and inspection purposes. Drones are equipped with downward-facing sensors, such as RGB, multispectral, thermal or LIDAR, and they can capture a great deal of aerial data in a short time.

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During an aerial drone survey with an RGB camera, the ground, its features and buildings are photographed multiple times from different angles, and each image is tagged with coordinates. First, these highly detailed geotagged images can be used for assets and inspections, for example, of building roofs or hard-to-reach areas. They can also be used to monitor areas across long distances, such as vegetation rows, roads and railroads.

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Taking the technology a step further, photogrammetry software can combine the images to generate geo-referenced 2D maps, elevations and 3D models. These maps can be used to extract information such as precise distances, surface and volumetric measurements.

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Companies building and managing large infrastructure such as roads, railways, bridges, dams, water reservoirs, airports, industrial complexes, oil and gas operations, and power complexes have considerable potential to use drone data to optimize their operations.

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The complexity and scale of such projects exposes them to many challenges this technology can help solve, including long and costly surveys, early identification of construction mistakes, penalties for missing deadlines, miscommunication between stakeholders and contractors, and volumetric assessment. It can also help stakeholders efficiently survey to avoid financial liabilities post-construction due to lack of maintenance and resultant damage to the environment.

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Drones can also open up new applications that were previously very hard or costly to access or closely track. Think of monitoring or inspecting hard-to-reach areas or of analyzing and optimizing rapidly changing environments such as construction sites.

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