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Understanding flight data

Flight data in Drone2Map refers to drone image metadata that is collected during a flight. Drone flight metadata contains crucial information for spatially locating and orienting imagery. Key details about the camera model, flight parameters, and temporal information are also typically recorded. This information is necessary to create useful imagery products and troubleshoot any flight concerns.

How flight data is used in Drone2Map

In Drone2Map, the images that are collected during a flight contain detailed metadata. This image metadata is used during the adjustment process to orient images into their correct location before any products are generated. However, not every value that is reported within the images metadata is used during processing. The most used metadata includes the following:

  • Camera information—Focal length, columns, rows, lens distortion, position, and orientation

  • Geolocation information—Latitude, longitude, altitude, horizontal coordinate system, and vertical coordinate system

  • Accuracy information—RTK, PPK, and quality flags

View and change flight data

The Flight Data tab contains tools to help manage imagery, adjust camera models, and update spatial information, including the following capabilities:

  • Project images can be removed, added, enabled, or disabled.

  • Multispectral projects with sensors that support radiometric correction can be calibrated for radiance or surface reflectance.

  • A dedicated image metadata viewer allows for quick access to individual image metadata fields.

  • Camera model information collected from image metadata can be viewed or updated in the Edit Camera pane.

  • Image geolocation information can be updated, imported, or exported.

Use cases for flight data

For example, a surveyor is regularly dispatched to different construction sites to collect drone imagery and create consistently accurate elevation products in Drone2Map. To ensure that each flight is identical, they have calibrated the camera parameters to optimal values. Using the user camera database provided by Drone2Map, the surveyor can store these values so they are populated by default for each project that uses that camera. This helps the surveyor reduce time-consuming calibration work and keep results consistent.

For another example, a blackberry farm has been experiencing exceptionally dry weather over multiple seasons and the farmers want to gather consistent readings of their crops to determine when to plant the next harvest. A drone with a multispectral sensor was flown daily to collect a consistent crop health report. Since calibration panels were used with each flight, the imagery can be calibrated for surface reflectance using the radiometric calibration window. This results in a consistently corrected True Ortho product that can be used to generate soil and vegetation indices. The indices that are generated over multiple days and weeks help provide a clearer idea of how these dry conditions are affecting the current season’s crops. When combining these health assessments with other weather information, the farm can further mitigate its losses, saving funds for further investment into operations.

For a final example, a transit organization’s disaster response team must fly in a remote location to gather data about road conditions after storm events. To save time and maintain accuracy, they set up a base station and use an RTK-enabled drone. This helps eliminate the need to lay down ground control markers and collect GPS points in potentially dangerous areas. Using the Fix Image Location for High Accuracy GPS processing option in Drone2Map, the image GPS metadata is assumed to be accurate and remains unmodified during the adjustment step. This allows them to still get quick and accurate results in the disaster area so it can be rebuilt faster.