Drone survey gives Ports of Indiana a high-accuracy business upgrade
For 30 years, the Chicago-based survey firm SPACECO has been providing comprehensive civil engineering and surveying services to enhance road, building, and a range of infrastructure projects in the US Midwest. About five years ago, Brian Kravets, SPACECO’s IT (and now UAS operations) manager became interested in drones. He asked if he could try bringing them into some of SPACECO’s workflows. His supervisor was open, and the rest is history.
“Drones have really bolstered how we handle jobs. They add value to typical topographic surveys as well as enable more services, because we do things faster than we did before,” Kravets said. “We’re a smaller company than a lot of our competitors in the area, but not all of them use drones. So this has been a way to stand out here in a pretty crowded market.”
SPACECO’s reputation attracted the attention of the Ports of Indiana (Indiana’s port authority), which hired them to survey their three major ports along Lake Michigan and the Ohio River. The ports are industrial sites for the import and export of grain, coal, steel, and a range of other materials. These survey sites together measured 3000 ac (1200 ha) and featured a lot of complex as well as inaccessible terrain.
- Cadastral maps
- United States
The client had been getting high-res imagery from airplanes for years. We told them what we could do with WingtraOne because of its high resolution and quick turnaround for aerials at a much lower cost. And they were very interested in our product.
Brian Kravets
UAS Operations Manager, SPACECO
3 ports, 3000 acres (1200 ha), 0.6 in (1.5 cm) accuracy in 3 days
A new bottom line with fast, detailed drone industrial surveys
Kravets spent one day at each port to capture the data with WingtraOne. In total—including processing time—he was able to provide the final product to the State of Indiana in a week. Flying with WingtraOne’s RX1R II payload and multi-frequency PPK unit saved him the time laying ground control points, as WingtraOne PPK only requires a few checkpoints to verify data accuracy.
All of this data so fast is much more cost-effective than hiring an airplane. And surveying all three ports would have taken about a month with a field crew, Kravets estimated. In fact, he said SPACECO likely wouldn’t have taken this project on as a ground-based survey.
When asked if he could have done it with other drones besides WingtraOne, Kravets said no. Fixed-wings, he said, land in a controlled crash and can damage themselves if the landing spot is not perfectly suited. And for projects larger than 50 acres (20 ha) he won’t consider using a multicopter, because it would cost too much time, which would eat directly into profits.
“If I were to try to do this project with a DJI Inspire 2, or any conventional multirotor drone, it would have cost a couple weeks worth of flying to capture 3000 acres (1200 ha). Instead, I was able to do it in three days, so that’s a significant amount of time saved.”
In addition to cost, the airplane-based aerials lack the same resolution that flying with the WingtraOne gives our client. Specifically, I was able to provide 0.6 inch (1.5 cm) absolute accuracy over this entire survey area. Aerial-wise, we couldn’t do this without drones.
Brian Kravets
UAS Operations Manager, SPACECO
