Lightweight unmanned aerial vehicles show their worth on small-scale photogrammetric projects and offer advantages over traditional aerial mapping and ground surveying. A Canadian company shows how.

Ingenuity and foresight have catapulted a local company onto the international stage.

Scott McTavish had been working for a forestry company in town when he saw an ad in a forestry magazine for a UAV – or unmanned aerial vehicle. The advertisement was looking for a UAV to take photos of crops.

With a background in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the mapping technology with many common uses these days including vehicle navigation and recreational geo-caching, McTavish could see a lot of possible applications.

In July of 2010, researchers from the Department of Geography at the University of Calgary used a lightweight unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to carry out an airborne survey of the terminus region of Fountain Glacier on Bylot Island, in the Canadian Arctic. The survey comprised 16 flight lines, with a total of 148 photos being obtained from an average height of 300m above the glacier surface. A detailed surface model of the glacier and a 10cm resolution orthophoto were produced. The results from this survey will be used to quantify future changes in glacier mass and changes to surface flow patterns.