Small Drone Cadastral Surveys for Establishment of Property Rights

In April 2016 Micro Aerial Projects L.L.C. participated in the “Technology for Property Rights”  project managed by Foundation for Economic Freedom and The Asia Foundation with support from the Omidyar Network. This project aims to introduce sustainable technology which can accelerate the generation of land titles. Currently an estimated number of eleven million citizens of the Philippines are waiting to have ownership of their land formalized.

Our role in this project included demonstrating the technical feasibility of small drone technology and the Structure from Motion (SfM) mapping technique in cadastral  surveying. We performed a pilot study to show the  economic advantages of small drone survey technology relative to conventional survey techniques in congested and spatially chaotic peri-urban environments currently lacking formalized land rights. We also showed how our high resolution maps, produced in a matter of 24 hours, can significantly improve community participation in adjudication and in-situ planning exercises.

With the delivery of our field reparable, highly automated mapping quad-copters equipped with V-map (www.v-map.net) geodetic quality L1/L2 GNSS  receivers (to reduce the need for costly ground control points)  as well as our Rapid Control System (details coming soon!) we could also convincingly show that small drone technology in combination with the SfM technique is a catalyst for the establishment of  small, local  mapping capacities.

Our  knowledge of geodetic and cadastral surveying as well as our work experience in similar environments in Africa, South America and Eastern Europe provides us with first hand perspectives of the challenges involved with the establishment of sustainable mapping capacities.  We are grateful for the opportunity to share this perspective with our colleagues in the Philippines and we look forward to expand on the friendly collaborations we enjoyed during the course of our visit in April.

http://www.microaerialprojects.com/