Pioneering the use of UAVs in Coastal and Environmental Engineering

WRL are pioneering the use of UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) drones for rapid and cost effective surveying in the coastal and environmental engineering sectors.

This new technology uses sophisticated software to process images taken during a deployment to produce high resolution topographic data in the form of dense point clouds. A short 20 minute flight provides in excess of 30 million data points which has comparable accuracy to a traditional RTK-GPS survey.

Over the past year WRL has deployed a fixed wing UAV over several locations including the Narrabeen-Collaroy embayment to monitor beach change, over the Big Swamp wetland near Taree to asses tidal inundation, and over Harrington Breakwater for asset management.

– See more at: http://www.wrl.unsw.edu.au/news/pioneering-the-use-of-uavs-in-coastal-and-environmental-engineering#sthash.rs1fzoXu.dpuf