Links to UAS and GIS Conference Presentations

Alternative Viewing Perspectives of Project Sites, Florida Environmental Permitting Summer School, 19-22 July 2022, Marco Island, FL

The presentation addresses alternative techniques to record video and capture photographs to provide 360-deg panning and panoramic views of large project sites or expansive areas-of-interest. The techniques utilize drone programmed modes, whereby the drone autonomously executes the flights to provide smooth, seamless views of the surrounding area.  Although manual flights can be performed to render such imagery, the benefits of using programmed modes will be discussed. Several case studies will be presented.

Aerial Mapping Case Studies, Florida Environmental Permitting Summer School, 20-23 July 2021, Marco Island, FL

The presentation addresses case studies that demonstrate the use of drones to provide a myriad of geospatial products focusing specifically on automated mapping flights for site modeling (e.g., point clouds and 3D meshes), visual inspection, and detailed analytics (e.g., distance, area, volume, and cross-section calculations).  In particular, the relative and absolute accuracies of drone mapping flights, vis-à-vis survey flights, will be addressed and quantified.  The presentation includes rendered photogrammetry products, geo-referenced drone videos, and animated 3D models,

Drone Applications for Environmental Assessment and Monitoring, Florida Environmental Permitting Summer School, 21-24 July 2020, Marco Island, FL

The presentation focuses on the use of drones for a variety of environmental applications to provide aerial content ranging from a simple “bird’s eye view” of an area-of-interest, to detailed analytics of a project site.  Applications including prescribed burn monitoring, waterway dye tracing, environmental infrastructure inspections, water sampling, wildlife monitoring, coastal change detection, and medical supply delivery during emergency operations will be addressed, along with supporting drone videos, photographs, and rendered 2D ortho maps and digital surface models.

Alternative Drone Flight Modes to Ensure Optimum Aerial Coverage, Florida Environmental Permitting Summer School, 16-19 July 2019, Marco Island, FL.

The presentation focuses on selecting the specific drone flight mode that ensures optimum aerial coverage of a project area.  Both manual (i.e., “free flight”) and programmed modes will be addressed.  Programmed modes, where the drone autonomously navigates a user-defined route, will include point-of-interest, multi-waypoint, and mapping missions. Point-of-interest missions will be further delineated by alternative flight altitudes and radial offsets to optimize coverage based on project area size.  Mapping flights, which capture highly-overlapping photographs, will demonstrate the production of 2D and 3D models.  These models can be easily uploaded to ArcGIS Online to develop web map applications they can be readily shared with clients and stakeholders. 

The Evolution of Drone Aerials to Provide Diverse Imagery and Geospatial Products, Florida Environmental Permitting Summer School, 17-20 July 2018, Marco Island, FL.

The presentation focuses on the evolving integration of drones (aka, Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS)) into the national airspace for aerial imaging applications.  Topics initially discussed will include the 2012 Congressional directive to the FAA to integrate UAS into the national airspace, impediments to implementing that directive, the FAA’s current policy and plans, and the existing authorization procedures to fly UAS both recreationally and commercially.  Several project examples will then be presented and discussed that illustrate the myriad of imagery and geospatial products that are available from UAS aerials, including geo-referenced videos and photographs, 2D orthomosaics and digital surface modes, 3D point clouds, elevation profiles along the UAS flight path, volumetric calculations of hurricane-caused sink holes, GIS shapefiles, and ArcGIS Online web map applications that can be easily shared with clients and stakeholders.

Assessing ESRI's Drone2Map for Processing Aerial Photographs, Seven Hills Regional User's Group (SHRUG) Workshop, 17 November 2016, Tallahassee, FL.

The presentation demonstrates the use of ESRI’s Drone2Map application to process aerial photographs acquired from a fixed-wing drone.  Nearly 100 photographs are processed from an aerial grid survey of 14 acres of crop land to output a high-resolution orthomosaic, DSM, interactive 3D textured mesh, and 3D point cloud.   The output dataset is then added to ArcGIS for Desktop for further analyses.  The point cloud data is processed to provide a colorized image of the surveyed site, a digital surface model, and a bare-earth (ground) model.  The bare-earth model is then compared to USGS DEM data to validate the accuracy of the point cloud data.  The point cloud is also imported into ArcScene to provide 3D visualization of the data as a colorized image, digital surface model, and bare-earth model.  Finally, the Drone2Map 3D textured mesh is shared as a scene package layer to ArcGIS Online.

Using UAVs for Aerial Mapping, Surveying, and Photography, Central Florida GIS Workshop, 18 September 2013, Orlando, FL.

The presentation focuses on the emerging use of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) for aerial mapping, surveying, and photography.  Topics discussed shall include the 2012 Congressional directive to the FAA to integrate UAS into national airspace by 2015, impediments to implementing that directive, the FAA’s current policy and plans, the existing authorization procedures to fly UAS in national airspace, and the economic and GIS ramifications of this emerging technology.  Recent and pending Florida, nationwide, and Federal legislation affecting law enforcement and commercial UAS operations shall also be addressed.  Several UAS monitoring and surveying applications will be presented that include aerial imagery captured from System Dynamics’ 8-ft wingspan “Firebird” UAS.  The autopilot-controlled Firebird is equipped with a forward-looking pan-and-tilt streaming video camera to provide a perspective view as the aircraft flies along its programmed trajectory.  The Firebird is also equipped with either a color or multi-spectral high-resolution camera to provide nadir photographs of the surface. The photographs are stored on-board the aircraft and downloaded following the survey mission.  Both the full motion video and the photographs are geo-tagged with the aircraft’s location when the imagery is captured. ArcGIS is used to process and share the mission data. An animation of the aircraft’s flight trajectory is rendered using a time-enabled layer in ArcMap, and the geo-tagged photographs are uploaded to the cloud and spatially-displayed using ArcGIS Online.  Examples of the geo-tagged full motion video, aircraft flight trajectory, and ArcGIS Online spatially-displayed photos will be presented.


Using UAVs for Aerial Photography and Video, Seven Hills Regional User's Group (SHRUG) Workshop, 15 November 2012, Tallahassee, FL.

The presentation addresses the use of UAVs to record aerial photographs and imagery for environmental applications such as wildlife monitoring, vegetation/wetland change detection, and hurricane/flood damage assessment. Photos and video from our 8-ft wingspan Firebird UAV will be presented and discussed. The status of FAA approval to fly in national airspace will also be addressed.


Remote Sensing for Lake Management --Assessment of Water Quality of  Eutrophic Lake in North Central Florida, Seven Hills Regional User's Group (SHRUG) Shuginar, 14 May 2012, Tallahassee, FL.

On-the-water monitoring and sampling are routinely conducted to assess water quality, pollutant loading, and algal concentrations in area lakes. While effective, these in situ data collection programs are oftentimes labor intensive, costly, and prone to measurement error. Remote sensing may serve to complement in situ monitoring of lakes and has the potential to be a cost effective approach to lake management. Analysis is conducted using Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) imagery that is calibrated with in situ water clarity measurements. Landsat TM exhibits moderate spatial resolution with seven broad spectral bands that are appropriate for monitoring local and regional-scale environmental and surface conditions. Its primary advantage for lake management applications is its relatively high temporal resolution, wide spatial extent, and spatial resolution suitable for monitoring lakes four hectares and larger. In particular, its 30 m spatial resolution (roughly 0.1 hectare) enables mapping in-lake variability. The study area involves Newnans Lake in Alachua County, FL.


GIS Tools for Non GIS Applications, Northeast Florida GIS User's Group Spring Meeting, 11 April 2013, Palatka, FL.

The presentation addresses the synergies that exist between GIS and other technical disciplines that involve spatial data processing. The presentation will interest GIS professionals who are curious about the use of regularly-used GIS tools applied to non-GIS problems. Tools and concepts that are addressed include spatial filtering, image geo-registration, data fusion, image enhancement, and the use of lidar point cloud data to render DSM or to render military target identification algorithms