A drone survey that has an accuracy of 2 cm will be as accurate as another type of survey that has an accuracy of 2 cm. The best technologies for mapping unmanned aerial vehicles today can resolve topography sites with an accuracy of 1 CM. If you are going to hire a drone inspection company, all you have to do is tell them the area you would like to scan. The GPS equipment inside the drone is not particularly accurate and some drones report an accuracy of up to +-10 m.
But what exactly do we mean when we talk about precision in drone mapping? Is it always important for a map to be very accurate? And what range of accuracy can you expect from your maps? We have prepared a manual to help you better understand the basics of drone mapping accuracy. Drone cartographic surveys are increasingly being used to support construction, development, mining, agriculture and other commercial activities. In recent years, as drone technology has advanced, so has the ability to make drone maps very accurate. The only established method for checking and demonstrating the accuracy of drone cartographic surveys is to use independently measured control points.
Surveys as they are constructed, hydrological surveys for flood prevention and land title surveys are just a few examples of situations in which total precision is necessary. Because drone maps contain thousands of points, compared to the few hundred points obtained by traditional topographic methods, maps with relative accuracy offer a very detailed overview of the terrain, which works well for these types of projects. It's great to see useful information available for free and will become more important as more industries adopt drone topography and mapping. If one point is low (for example, 100 m above sea level) and another point is high (for example, 200 m above sea level), the drone will gradually rise or fall between those two levels; that is, if set at a flight altitude of 120 m, the drone can start a grid line 220 m high and end up 320 m high, but it will not reflect any variation in terrain between those two points (e.g., the RMS error is the final calculation of the accuracy) of the results of drone cartographic surveys When have they had consider all possible sources of error in the model (not just the GSD or GPS error).
The first element that must be taken into account to estimate the accuracy of drone survey data is the terrestrial sampling distance (GSD), a measure of the smallest object that would appear visible in the original photographs, before processing them in the cartographic outputs. Fill out the contact form below to find out how Drone Site Surveys can offer scaffolding inspections in its multi-site product portfolio. There are two types of precision when it comes to drone cartographic studies (or any other type of survey): relative precision (also known as local precision) and absolute precision (also known as global precision). However, accuracy largely depends on the drone you use and the quality of the data you collect, and it is possible to use drones to create maps with an accuracy of one centimeter.
