BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN AERIAL IMAGING AND TERRESTRIAL DATA CAPTURE

The Challenges of Drone Use in Facade Mapping

There have been rapid advancements in unmanned aerial systems over recent years, yet there is widespread consensus that we have still only seen a fraction of how unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs or ‘drones’) could ultimately improve efficiency for geospatial professionals and their customers. To get a glimpse of the future, 'GIM International' spoke to Mark Nicolai, co-founder of industry start-up Aeroscan. Here, he shares his vision of how drones could form the missing link between aerial imaging and terrestrial data capture.

According to independent research by the likes of PwC and Goldman Sachs, the construction industry tops the list in terms of commercial drone use and is by far the fastest growing sector. UAVs are becoming increasingly commonplace on building sites, enabling construction companies to monitor progress with ever-greater accuracy, efficiency and safety. The use of data captured by an unmanned aerial system (UAS) is also on the rise in 3D models for construction planning and design purposes. Drone deployment has reached a sufficient level of maturity that activities such as UAV-based roof inspections have become fairly routine. Now, a Dutch startup called Aeroscan is taking things a step further and exploring the use of drones for facade mapping. “If this can be achieved, it will have major implications – not only for construction and real estate but also for infrastructure, law enforcement, emergency services, local governments and so on. It relates to every business case already using aerial data, plus it will unlock countless new business cases by providing higher-quality data and more detailed information about the local environment,” states Mark Nicolai, one of the two co-founders of Aeroscan.

Founded in mid-2017, Aeroscan is actually the result of three businesses: a leading Dutch construction company, an IT company specialized in the development of cloud software for construction management, and Nicolai’s visual media company which he started in 2008 and which produced promotional videos and photos of building sites for construction companies, including using drones. “Our photos were mainly used for marketing purposes, but technical departments started to ask whether they could use the photos for calculation purposes too,” recalls Nicolai. “So we increasingly moved into drone-based imaging for construction firms and social housing associations. We have the necessary equipment, certificates and a dedicated drone crew to collect data. We also have customers who are already using our software and 3D models to obtain objective data as the basis for reports, calculations, estimates for repair, and so on. But we’ve noticed that large property owners have a need for real-world insights into the condition of their properties, including their facades, so we decided to take a risk and investigate whether UAVs could be used for this.”

Helping to shape EU drone regulations

“Together with two other partners, VMRG and Octo, we received €1.6 million of EU (EFRO) subsidy from the ‘Kansen voor West II’ programme as part of a three-year project called the Facade Service Application (FaSA). The project involves a consortium of dozens of contractors and multinationals from the entire chain of producing, installing and maintaining facades. We needed a drone operating licence for the built environment, so we applied to the Dutch aviation authority (ILT). When the people at ILT heard about the FaSA project, they invited Aeroscan to work within the framework of a Specific Operations-based Risk Assessment (SORA) for drones and to cooperate with them on the JARUS project which is helping to shape the future of EU drone regulations,” he continues. The Joint Authorities for the Rulemaking of Unmanned Systems (JARUS) is a group of experts from the national aviation authorities (NAAs) and regional aviation safety organizations working to recommend a single set of technical, safety and operational requirements for the certification and safe integration of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) into airspace and at aerodromes. Presently involving 59 countries, as well as the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and EUROCONTROL, the objective of JARUS is to facilitate each authority to write their own requirements. “In the JARUS project the focus is on presenting a real-life scenario and operation-based risk assessment and proving that your business case is safe. So this was a unique opportunity for Aeroscan to work on this conceptual new framework for future EU regulations based on our actual business plan,” explains Nicolai. “After a process of 16 months, we finally gained approval for our developed scenario in late December 2018 and we now have the most complete certificate that’s possible today: we are flying our drones on a kind of ‘temporary exemption’ based on future EU regulations that are still being developed!” he adds. As a result, Aeroscan became the first company in the history of the Dutch UAV industry to receive an official permit for flying drones in urban areas. “We’re gaining valuable knowledge and insights about how to investigate measures and risks in the field, which we share with ILT. By continuing to work with the authorities we hope to help expand the possibilities of flying in urban areas for the industry as a whole.”

Field pilots for housing associations

For its customers in the housing sector, Aeroscan’s long-term aim is to offer UAV city mapping in combination with photogrammetry/data processing, and to combine automatic image and object recognition techniques with UAV data to find flaws in real estate such as cracks in facades or window frames that need repainting. The company ultimately hopes to generate maintenance insights and data visualizations based on the analysis. So far, the main focus is on the operational aspect, i.e. data acquisition. “Since gaining the licence, we have conducted several pilot projects for social housing firms and property companies using existing off-the-shelf technology. In fact, our first pilot – mapping a row of terraced houses in a small Dutch city – was the country’s first ever off