Overview
A regional transport authority needed current, trustworthy terrain data along a planned interchange expansion. Ground survey would have taken six weeks beside live traffic; the design team needed it in ten days. Skyvane flew the full corridor in four mornings, tied it to surveyed control, and delivered engineering-ready surfaces on schedule.
The challenge
The corridor mixed live motorway, rail crossings, suburban streets, and a river floodplain — each with different permissions, hazards, and accuracy demands. Flights had to thread early-morning windows, keep clear of traffic operations, and still hold photogrammetric overlap across 420 hectares.
Our approach
We split the corridor into nine flight blocks with shared control, flew cross-grid patterns at 80 m with 80/70 overlaps, and surveyed 34 ground control points with GNSS. Processing ran nightly so gaps were re-flown the next dawn — never discovered a week later.
- 2.1 cm horizontal / 3.4 cm vertical verified accuracy
- Orthomosaic, DTM, DSM, and 0.5 m contours delivered
- Cut-fill model for three interchange options
- Web viewer shared with six stakeholder teams
Outcome
Design work started on day eleven instead of week seven. The authority now re-flies the corridor quarterly with Skyvane to track earthworks against the same baseline.
From Above
"Skyvane's surfaces matched our check survey inside two centimeters. The program saved us a month of possession planning."
— Design Lead, transport authorityKeep Exploring
Survey-grade data, on your schedule.
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