Our drone expert answers: What are the advantages and disadvantages of drone surveys compared to traditional survey methods?
Advantages and disadvantages of drone surveying
In this expert interview, Bob Foley from Engineers With Drones explains the main advantages and disadvantages of drone surveys when compared with traditional surveying. The primary category discussed below is land surveying as it's the most relevant to drone surveys. See the key takeaways below, or jump to the full transcript.
Advantages of drone surveying
Efficiency: Drones can map large areas of land in a single day, far quicker than traditional methods.
Safety: Data can be captured without sending people into dangerous terrain like cliffs or unstable ground.
Cost: Typically drone surveys are not as expensive as traditional surveying, especially when surveying large areas of land.
Disadvantages of drone surveying
Accuracy: Traditional survey instruments (total stations, laser scanners) still achieve higher accuracy than drones.
Airspace limits: While it's no problem for Engineers with Drones to operate around airports, in the times it's busy with back-to-back flights understandably drones couldn't become active.
Conclusion
Drone surveys will not replace traditional survey methods for absolute precision, but they are unbeatable for efficiency, cost, and safety in land surveying projects. For many applications, drones deliver the right level of accuracy depending on your requirements - at a fraction of the time, cost or risk.
What are the main advantages and disadvantages of drone surveying compared to traditional surveying methods?
Yeah, absolutely. So in this instance, I'm going to speak primarily about land surveying. It's the most relevant, I think, for drone surveying.
The big difference, let's start with the negatives. There's nothing going to replace the accuracy of a traditional surveyor on the ground. There's nothing going to replace that. Maybe in a few years when drones get very, very good, but right now, traditional surveying methods on the ground using total stations or laser scanners or things like that, that's unassailable in terms of its accuracy. But in terms of efficiency, bang for buck, if you will, the drone is very hard to beat, especially in large areas of land.
There's very little can beat a drone in terms of its ability to capture data quickly, efficiently, and in dangerous areas. So for example, we did a lot of coastal site mapping in a project recently. And almost all of that was not accessible at all unless you were hanging off of a rope. It was cliffs or very sheer pieces of land that could not be accessed. But with the drone, we were able to just fly out, point the drone at this land and map it all entirely, no problem at all.
When you have something like that at your disposal, an object that you can place anywhere you like in 3D space and orientate your sensors on whatever piece of land you want, it makes it incredibly versatile. The speed of capture as well and the density of data that you can get from a drone is far in excess of what you would get with, let's say, traditional methods. So I can easily capture 3 to 400 hectares in a day. Whereas to do the same thing with a tight grid pattern with traditional surveying methods is, let's say it takes a lot longer.
You're not putting people at risk as well, in dangerous land or working exposed alone out in places. So that sort of thing is probably some of the benefits. There's some scenarios where a drone doesn't work, like if somebody asked us to map right in front of the end of the runway at Dublin Airport, I might have to decline. We have operated in and around airports, it's no problem for us, but when an airport is so busy that there's no gap between the aeroplanes, then they tend not to want the drone guy in there.
In terms of disadvantages, probably the biggest one, as I said, is precision. The accuracy, it's not as, the accuracies of a drone survey are not as good as a traditional survey. But when you're talking about things like vegetation and grass heights and all that sort of thing, you can kind of get caught up in the details. Let's say if the end result is a guy with an excavator coming in and digging holes, maybe you don't need 5 millimeters of accuracy because I don't think the guy with the excavator is operating to that. So, you know, those are the sorts of things to consider when looking at the disadvantages.
You mentioned cost. Typically, drone surveys are not as expensive at all as traditional surveys. They're a lot less time consuming, a lot less man hours required. So that drives down the cost. That in itself is a huge advantage as well. So I think in a nutshell, the drone, very efficient, very cost effective. Doesn't replace traditional surveys, but it really, really can be very effective in certain types of surveys.
Bob is an EASA B1 licensed aircraft engineer and co-founder of Engineers With Drones. Bob is both a skilled drone operator and an all round engineer. He has extensive experience in technical drone operations, including high-value asset inspections, industrial surveys, and confined space flights. Bob is also an expert in UAV land mapping, 3D modelling, LiDAR, and a range of advanced drone applications.
How do drone surveys compare to traditional surveys?
According to our expert Bob Foley, founder of Engineers With Drones, drones are the best solution in terms of speed and safety especially for large areas of land. Traditional surveys remain more accurate vs a drone survey, however you need to determine what level of precision is needed for the land survey before getting caught up in this. For example, you might not need a 5mm level of accuracy if the machinery being brought onto site, like excavators for example, aren't operating to that.
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