Construction of Santa Fe College Blount Hall

This was a 19-month project to capture drone video and photos that documented the construction of Santa Fe College Blount Hall in downtown Gainesville, FL.  The three-story, 87,366 square-foot facility includes classrooms and lab suites, along with student support and service areas. To effectively disseminate drone footage to stakeholders, an online Story Map was developed that archived every drone mission at the site via videos, photographs, and narrative text.  The story map can be accessed here: SFC Blount Hall Story Map.

Flights at the Florida Aquatic Swimming & Training (FAST) Facility

Monthly flights are being conducted at the Florida Aquatic Swimming and Training (FAST) facility in Ocala, FL.  The new, state-of-the-art aquatics facility will be one of the largest in the country, featuring indoor and outdoor 50-meter competition pools.  The indoor pool is expected to have the capacity to hold over 2,000 spectators.  Aerial photographs and videos are being captured to document construction progress, provide timely visual updates of the construction to stakeholders, and afford social media and advertising content.  Below is a collage of video clips with music soundtrack from a flight at the site in the Summer of 2021.

The project was completed in March 2022.  The video below is a 16-month time-lapse of loiter flights conducted at the site.

Construction of Myra Terwilliger Elementary School

This was a 14-month project to capture bi-weekly drone footage to document the construction of the new Myra Terwilliger elementary school in Gainesville, FL.  Midway through the project, a 20-acre mapping flight was performed to generate 2D and 3D models of the site.  Specifically, a flight path grid was programmed at an altitude of 260 ft, and 137 nadir photos were captured that resulted in models exhibiting a ground sample distance of less than an inch.  An animation of the interactive 3D model is shown below.

Throughout the project, numerous manual and programmed trajectories were flown.  The video below depicts flights along the building’s west and east elevations a few weeks prior to project completion.  A story map that archives every drone mission at the site can be accessed here: Elementary School Story Map.

Construction Site 360-Degree Panoramic View

Monthly drone flights are being performed at the construction site of a new football facility at the University of Florida.  In addition to capturing video and photographs to document progress, a flight was conducted to generate a panoramic view of the site. Here, the drone captured a series of overlapping photographs at different camera depression angles as it rotated in-place 360 degrees.  The photos were then stitched together to yield an interactive, 360-degree panorama.  Below is the rendered panorama which is hosted on Kuula.  The panorama can be panned, zoomed, and rotated to quickly visualize the entire site.

Flights at San Felasco Tech City

This is an on-going project to conduct periodic flights at the 80-acre site in Alachua, FL to document development progress.  San Felasco Tech City (SFTC) will feature 300,000 square feet of tech space to accommodate research labs, offices, and light manufacturing.  The site plan also includes a pre-school and 252 single and multi-family housing units with a clubhouse, playground, and pool. Manual, loiter, and multi-waypoint flights are being conducted to capture high-resolution videos and photographs.  Below are video clips from a February 2020 flight highlighting the completed pre-school.  A story map that archives drone missions at the site can be accessed here: SFTC Story Map.  This is an on-going project with flights expected to continue through June 2023.

Mapping Flight at Groundwater Remediation Site

A mapping flight was conducted at a ground water remediation site to complement a land surveyor’s GNSS elevation measurements of 16 monitoring wells at the site. (The surveyor’s equipment comprised a Trimble R10 and data logger, with corrections provided from a nearby CORS station).  The project area was within Gainesville Airport (GNV) airspace.  Hence, authorization was obtained via the FAA's Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability (LAANC) to perform the flight. The flight was configured with the Pix4D Capture app and performed at an altitude of 150 ft above ground level.   The drone captured 55 nadir photos at the 3-acre site which were processed by ArcGIS Pro to render a high-resolution orthomosaic and digital surface model (DSM).  Photo processing yielded excellent resolution with a Ground Sample Distance (GSD) less than half-inch.  Below is a graphic of the drone flight line and photo locations along with the resulting DSM, followed by an animation of the rendered 3D textured-mesh model of the site.

Construction of UF Health Fixel Institute

This was a 10-month project to capture drone footage that documented the construction of the UF Health Fixel Institute.   Flights were conducted bi-weekly to capture photographs and videos at the site.  To provide timely drone footage to the stakeholders, an Index Story Map was developed and updated after each flight to chronologically organize drone footage.  Story Maps are extremely efficient, and easily shared with stakeholders, since videos, photos, and narrative text reside at a single URL.  The Story Map can be accessed here: http://arcg.is/f5iTO . The video from the final flight at the site is shown below.

Mapping Flight at School Construction Site

A mapping flight was performed at an elementary school construction site to render a geo-referenced orthomosaic, digital surface model, and 3D textured mesh and point cloud.  The Pix4D app was used to configure the mapping flight line.  Photos were taken every two seconds at a flight altitude of 80 m (AGL) and ground speed of 10 m/sec.  These parameters, together with the drone camera’s wide field-of-view, ensured a high percentage of photo overlap (> 70%) that is necessary to achieve high-resolution photogrammetry results.  Overall, 87 photographs were taken during the flight that covered approximately 12.2 acres. The highly-overlapping photos yielded a ground sample distance (GSD) of one inch.  The orthomosaic, flight line, and photo locations are shown below, followed by an animation of the 3D textured mesh.

School Construction Site

A flight was conducted at a construction site in Clay County, FL where a new elementary school is planned. The flight was performed immediately after the 23-acre site had been cleared of timber.

To capture the full extent of the site,  the flight mode was chosen to be a Point-of-Interest (POI) autonomous flight, whereby the drone was programmed to fly a CCW circular loiter pattern about the site's geographic center.  A 10' x 12' blue tarp was placed at the approximate center of the site as a visual point-of-reference. The drone performed the POI flight around the tarp at an altitude of 50m, radial offset of 155m, and 10 m/sec ground speed. Four loiters were completed, during which time several minutes of video was recorded.  Nineteen photographs were captured during the final two loiters with the camera taking photos ever 10 seconds.

Below is a GIS map produced following the mission that details the drone flight path and photo locations.  Note, the basemap depicts "stale" aerial imagery taken before the site was cleared.

Two photographs from the flight are shown below along with a short video segment.

A loiter video taken four months later shows the significant progress at the site.

An autonomous, 13-waypoint flyover of the construction site nine months after groundbreaking can be viewed at Flyover at Discovery Oaks Elementary School.

Church Construction Site

A key use of drones is to provide periodic aerial imagery at construction sites to easily monitor weekly/monthly construction progress.  A flight was conducted at Queen of Peace Catholic Church in Gainesville, FL where a new Administration building is planned.  Parrish-McCall Constructors, Inc. is the general contractor.  The flight was conducted during the early stages of the project when utility lines had been re-located and the terrain leveled and graded.

As part of pre-flight mission planning,  Google Earth was accessed and its Polygon Tool was used to approximate the area of the site.  As depicted below, the project area (outlined in yellow) was estimated to be 0.36 acres.

For relatively small sites such as this, the optimum flight mode was chosen to be a Point-of-Interest (POI) autonomous flight, whereby the drone is programmed to fly a circular loiter pattern about the center point of the site.  The flying altitude, radial offset from the center point, and camera look-down angle are selected such that the entire site is always in view during the circular loiter.

To perform the flight, the center point of the project area was approximated and marked with a tri-pod.  The drone was then flown directly above the tri-pod at an altitude of 50 meters to take a “top-down” (nadir) photo of the site. (Following the flight, this photo was imported into ArcGIS and geo-referenced to the site coordinates.)  After the nadir photo was taken, the drone was programmed in-flight to perform the POI flight about the tri-pod at an altitude of 30m, radial offset of 26m, and 5 m/sec ground speed.  The drone performed sixteen, highly-repeatable loiters during which time several minutes of video was recorded.  Over 50 photographs were then captured while continuing to loiter, with the camera programmed to take photographs ever two seconds.  This 2-sec photo rate provides a high degree of overlap that allows the photos to be imported into photogrammetry software to render orthomosaics, digital surface models (DSM), 3D textured meshes, and 3D point clouds.

Below is a GIS map produced following the flight depicting the drone flight path and locations where photos were taken.  The geo-referenced nadir photo is evident in the map.

The 50 photos were then processed with photogrammetry software and imported into ArcGIS for final processing.  The resultant orthomosaic, DSM, 3D textured mesh, and the 3D point cloud are shown below.  The orthomosaic nicely depicts the composite aerial image formed from the 50 photos; the DSM, shown with 1-meter contour intervals, clearly distinguishes the heights of the buildings, trees, and bushes from the graded terrain; the point cloud and the textured mesh provide illustrative 3D representations of the site.

  

   

The textured mesh and point cloud can each be interactively panned, zoomed, and tilted.   An online map illustrating this capability for the point cloud can be accessed at Interactive Point Cloud Web Map.  A video of this capability for the textured mesh is shown below.

An interactive online map is accessible at Construction Site Map. At the interactive map, click on a photo point feature to display the photo. (Note, geo-referenced nadir photo not included in the online map).  Below is a brief video from the flight.

Real Estate - Commercial Property

Geo2030 Consulting collaborated with Colliers International to gather aerial video and photographs to be used for marketing a $4M ocean front commercial property in Jacksonville Beach, FL.  Several short videos were recorded. The  footage was provided to the marketing division at Colliers International who produced the final Marketing Video with Audio Overlay.

Several beach front photos of the commercial property were also captured. In the interactive map below, click on a yellow icon to display the photo taken at that location. Clicking on the displayed photo provides an enlarged photo of the scene.

Real Estate -- Rural Property

A series of flights were performed at an 80-acre residential property in Alachua County, FL to gather videos and photographs for the real estate listing agent. The flights included a 6-waypoint route to capture video of the entire property, a circular loiter flight to capture video and photographs focused on the main residence, and a manual flight to capture aerial photographs from various vantage points at the site.  The 4-minute waypoint flight video is provided below.  An online map of the waypoint route is accessible at: Waypoint Flight Path at 80-acre Site. 

Real Estate -- Single Family Residence

Aerial photographs and video were taken at a single-family rental property in a subdivision in southwest Gainesville, FL.  As part of pre-flight mission planning, the Country Appraiser's website was first accessed to review and inspect parcel information for the property.  The unit (Lot 63) resides at the end of a cul-de-sac on approximately 0.29 acres.  The residence features 1782 sqft of heated living space, 570 sqft finished garage, 310 sqft finished screen porch, and a 465 sqft wooden deck.

Also as part of mission planning, Google Earth and Street View imagery (shown below) were accessed to better formulate the flight plan to avoid the dense tree canopy and be respectful of neighbors' privacy.

Six photos from the flight are shown below.

 

 

Waypoint Flight at Wetland Mitigation Bank

A waypoint flight was conducted over a 30-acre portion of a wetland mitigation bank in Bradford County, FL to assess the ground vegetation on the property.  Ten waypoints were configured to establish five north-south flight path transects that ensured complete aerial coverage of the site.

During post-flight processing, drone flight data (latitude, longitude, and heading) were overlaid on the video to provide geo-reference information. Geo-referenced videos can be beneficial when flying large-acreage sites such as wetlands, conservation easements, and timber land. Below is a portion of the geo-referenced video along the first three transects.

Fairway Flights at Gainesville Country Club

Flights along two fairways at Gainesville Country Club were performed to record Tee-to-Green video as well as to capture still photographs above each green.  Following the mission, drone flight data (specifically, the latitude and longitude coordinates) were imported into ArcGIS to render a geo-referenced map of the flight paths. 

A key benefit of importing information into ArcGIS is that the flight data can be used to render a graph of the fairway elevation profile.  ArcGIS links U.S. Geological Survey digital elevation data to the flight path latitude and longitude coordinates. The corresponding elevation profiles for each fairway are shown below.

In addition to aerial photos of the 1st and 10th greens, several other photos were taken while on site.  Below is an animated video of the flight along the 10th fairway.

Sink Hole Volumetric Calculations

A drone flight was performed to view several sink holes that opened in Alachua County, FL as a result of severe rainfall from Hurricane Irma.  After recording a brief video, nearly three dozen photos were taken above the largest sink hole to determine its volume.  The photos, which exhibited high overlap, were then processed with photogrammetry software to provide an orthomosaic, a digital surface model (DSM), and a three-dimensional point cloud that can be interactively tilted and rotated.

The DSM was imported into ArcGIS and volumetric calculations were performed using an array of spatial analysis tools.  A summary of the results is available at Analysis Summary and Interactive Point Cloud which includes a link to the interactive three-dimensional point cloud.

The methodology applied to the sink hole calculations is the same that construction and aggregate companies are now using to measure stockpile volumes exploiting drone photographs.