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Thermal camera support

Thermal cameras continue to become more prevalent and provide support for higher resolutions. Their sensors allow you to measure the amount of heat radiating off a surface. When using a thermal camera on a drone, you can fly over large areas and capture pixel values that represent temperature at a high resolution. Obtaining such results in the past required more expensive or time-consuming satellite, aerial, or ground observations.

Thermal processing in ArcGIS Drone2Map is done by reading specific metadata tags attached to the images. These provide the values required for the pixel value to thermal value calculations.

Note:

Drone2Map supports a wide range of thermal cameras; however, some DJI thermal cameras may require an optional installation file, which can be downloaded from My Esri and installed alongside Drone2Map 2024.1 and later.

Images from a thermal camera can be captured in different formats, the most popular of which are radiometric JPEG or TIFF. These are the formats that ArcGIS Drone2Map supports and allows for processing into a thermal true ortho product. Thermal cameras support is listed in the following table: Supported thermal cameras

Future versions of ArcGIS Drone2Map will continue to expand support for new cameras.

When processing thermal true ortho products, the temperature values can be output as Celsius or Fahrenheit. To set the temperature values, click Settings > General tab > Temperature Settings.

Best practices

While ArcGIS Drone2Map can process thermal imagery, it is important to maintain good collection practices to achieve the highest accuracy and best-quality products. The following practices can help you achieve the best field collection results:

  • For thermal sensors, it is recommended that the flight plan has at least 90 percent side and frontal overlap between all images.

  • For best results, capture images from a nadir viewpoint, as oblique images may cause processing to fail or drop images during the adjustment stage.

  • Consider the subject matter and time of day that you are collecting the thermal imagery, as temperatures can vary greatly based on weather conditions. Flights that take place around solar noon on a clear day can introduce false temperature values due to elevated emissivity measurements influenced by highly reflective surfaces. For best results, thermal flights are best flown under overcast conditions to reduce solar effects on emissivity.

Why use thermal data?

Maintain system efficiency

A solar farm needs to have its panels inspected for wear. The process of manually inspecting thousands of panels over such a large area is time consuming and inefficient. A drone equipped with a thermal camera is used instead to capture thermal imagery of the site. The images are processed in Drone2Map to generate a Thermal True Ortho. Using the Thermal True Ortho, repair crews can easily identify hot spots to identify damaged panels as well as cold spots to find underperforming panels allowing them to prioritize repairs and maintain efficiency.

Increased safety

A general contractor needs to assess damages to multiple roofs in a neighborhood after a hurricane. Inspecting the roofs physically can be dangerous since not all areas are easily accessible or stable. By capturing thermal drone imagery over the houses, the contractor can avoid unnecessary risk and find issues that are difficult to spot with standard imagery. Drone2Map is used to process the thermal imagery into a Thermal True Otho allowing the contractor to identify areas that are suffering from heat loss which may indicate missing or damaged shingles. Additionally, any abnormally cold spots can be reviewed for the possibility of moisture or leaks. This workflow allows the contractor to safely assess roof damage and to efficiently plan areas for repair.

Advanced insight

A large livestock operation is seeking a way to better monitor its herd. Monitoring the location of its herd can be time-consuming and difficult when livestock are in groves of large trees or brush. Using a thermal camera to capture drone imagery of the animals offers a quick way to track and count the herd remotely. The processed thermal imagery in Drone2Map can assist in spotting thermal signatures of livestock that would otherwise be difficult to see in true color drone images. Since the thermal imagery can be captured and processed rapidly the livestock operation is able to quickly and effectively find and retrieve livestock, keeping the farm productive.