Points to Consider for an Aerial Mapping Project

Here are some things to consider when considering using an aerial mapping firm to help you execute your next project. Of course, it goes without saying that you should: 

• only deal with firms that are fully licensed to do business
• work with firms that carry adequate levels of professional liability insurance
• work with firms whose work is performed and managed by highly skilled, experienced and technically proficient professionals

Equally critical is the need for full inclusion in the work process, from development of the work scope, management of personnel, execution of technical work processes, independent review and QA/QC, and delivery of the data to the client.  Other areas include:

Equipment

Aerial mapping is a highly technical profession, and is incredibly hardware intensive, involving planes, helicopters or other aerial platforms, significant investment in hardware for capturing data; be it a film camera, a digital sensor or an airborne LiDAR/digital sensor that is equipped with the latest inertial measurement systems and airborne multi constellation GNSS receiver. All of this equipment is useless without highly skilled technicians to calibrate, maintain and operate it and interpret the data that is collected. The sheer volume of the data collected means the need for robust computer network architecture, high speed computers, a myriad of software and again, the personnel to keep the system running and data flowing efficiently.

Deliverables

Deliverables have shifted from ink on Mylar hand drafted manuscripts, to CAD drawings on CD or DVD, to now routinely shipping multi-terabyte hard disk drives of data to the office for processing and delivery of equally voluminous amount of data to our clients. It is critical to make sure you ask for data that you can use in a technical sense, as well having computers and other hardware that can fully exploit the dataset. 

Please discuss your concerns about data; we can tailor the way we deliver data to you, be it tiling photos and point clouds into smaller sets that are more easily managed, and may allow you to establish a workflow that enables more of your designers or technicians to work simultaneously on a project.

Contact AXIS today today to plan your next mapping project.