Fast, detailed urban drone survey of Cancún to promote development
Every year, millions of people flock to the beautiful white-coral beaches of Cancún to take a vacation. This paradise city in Mexico features colorful contrasts of high-rise buildings and seascapes, hosting a blend of residential and tourist ambition.
For Mexico, Cancún is not only a point of beauty and pride. Like any beautiful place in the world, it draws a lot of tourist income and can be taxed in a way that significantly helps the economy. In order for the government to maximize this income potential and feed gains back into the development of the country, it needs a clear view of all of the infrastructure and business. That view is now available thanks to WingtraOne drone data.
“Our job is to collect data so that the government can collect taxes and fees related to what they do in the city,” said David Samadi, CEO of Agenda Digital, a drone-based data analysis and inspection company that partnered with GeoEarth. “Cancún’s cadastral information is very old, based on satellite images. That’s why we are working with WingtraOne to update it. The results we are getting from the RX1R II payload plus PPK are high resolution and very precise.”
- Land management and development
- Mexico
Many people ask us ‘why aren’t you using another drone?’ Because WingtraOne is very safe, it minimizes a search for a take-off and landing space, and it’s easy to operate in very difficult areas while giving us good data.
David Samadi
CEO of Agenda Digital
Mapping a 270 km2 (104 mi2) city to 5 cm (2 in) detail in 19 days
Working as a small team, Agenda Digital and GeoEarth pilots and engineers traveled to Cancún and stayed in a hotel with a high roof. Every morning, they would climb up and measure the island winds while tracking the weather on an app. When the conditions were okay, they flew an average of six flights a day and 400 ha (4 km2) per flight. In six weeks, they were able to fly 19 days and captured all the data over those days.
“We gathered information from the entire city, from the touristy part to the outskirts,” said Luis Zedillo, CTO and certified pilot with Agenda Digital. “Since this was cadastral, we captured data at the centimeter level and our results are 5 cm (2 in) GSD. The digital elevation model has to be very accurate so we can tell how many floors are in every construction. So we flew with a 90 percent front overlap and 70 percent lateral overlap.”
WingtraOne not only gathered the data reliably and at a high quality, but it also saved the team and the government loads of time and money, offering results within two months.
With a multicopter, they said it would have taken six to eight months to run the same survey. And a manned aircraft, they estimate, would have cost 1500 USD per hour to hire for the job, plus the risk to the crew in a windy location.
This is the great thing about WingtraOne: we can cover large, urban areas safely. We don’t have to take risks that it will go off course. For any drone, the difficult part is the landing. Cancún was very windy, but we managed to land very well. Even in 9 m/s (20 mph) winds, we could handle it.
Luis Zedillo
CTO and certified drone pilot with Agenda Digital
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