Big Pine Launches Drone Services
Justin Johnston, President of Big Pine Consultants LLC (Big Pine), recently received his FAA Part 107 Remote Pilot license to begin offering aerial drone services for Big Pine. Big Pine purchased a new DJI Phantom 4 Pro V2.0 drone as the initial drone for providing services. With a 20megapixel gimbal mounted digital camera, the drone is capable of getting high quality photography from many angles. Using a combination of software, Big Pine is able to stitch collected drone imagery together to create 3D Models, Point Clouds, Plant Health Maps, Digital Orthoimagery, and Contour Maps for use in ESRI ArcGIS Pro, ArcMap, and AutoCAD software such as Civil 3D*. Ground controls can be incorporated into the workflows to increase the accuracy of the data.
In addition to creating mapping data, drones can be used for other tasks as well, including:
- Observing conditions that are difficult to access in person, such as:
- the underside of high bridges for inspections
- cliff faces for rock shelters
- steep scree slopes for timber rattlesnake habitat
- slip or landslide areas in steep terrain that need to be remediated
- Collecting aerial imagery to take a snapshot in time of current conditions for documentation, such as:
- to confirm 70% vegetative cover is achieved on a pipeline right-of-way post-restoration or identify areas that need to be addressed
- Using vegetative health mapping, which looks at how “green” areas of the map are, you can also determine how healthy the permanent stabilization vegetation is and identify areas that might require soil amendments
- to document progress on a new building to satisfy bank loan requirements
- to show that wetland mats have been removed and streams or wetlands have been restored to satisfy United States Army Corps of Engineers, Clean Water Act Section 404 permit requirements (or Section 401 State certification requirements)
- to document progress of construction of a utility for management purposes
- to confirm 70% vegetative cover is achieved on a pipeline right-of-way post-restoration or identify areas that need to be addressed
- Collecting aerial photos or video for marketing purposes, such as for residential or commercial real estate. By combining the imagery with Adobe Creative Suite software, Big Pine can create stunning graphics. 2D maps or 3D Scenes in ArcGIS Pro can also be used to make visuals of a particular location.
