UAV monitoring of large scale environmental projects.

This is a collaborative monitoring and technological advancement project between SEACAMS (Bangor) and DTM Technologies (www.dtm-tech.co.uk).The project began in late January 2015 and involved the removal of large quantities of sand, vegetation and humic material from the dunes. This has been done to encourage sand mobilisation from the beach through the main dune wall and in to the slacks behind, with the hope that it will encourage the reinvigoration of species normally found in a dune eco-system. The project has been devised and funded by Natural Resources Wales (NRW) and is the largest project of its kind in the United Kingdom. The area was scanned using a Leica Geosystems ScanStation C10 laser scanner and also ground control points were measured using 2 methods. SEACAMS used a rover with base station and post processed to create cm accurate positioning. DTM Technologies surveyed the same ground control points using a GNSS RTK rover. This was done in order to compare ground control points for consistency . There were some anomalies in the ground control points and these were disregarded. Only GCP’s that were consistent (within 5cms) were used in creating the final model. The final model was created by DTM Technologies using a UAV to survey and capture images, 503 in total, with roughly a 60% overlap and using photogrammetry, the final model was built.

For more information on UAV monitoring of large scale environmental projects. talk to DTM Technologies