Related Inventory Content
Hello Wildlabs! A merry belated 2026 to you all, I hope the year is off to a stellar start. I thought it might be interesting for some to see how drones are being used to survey an old railway line that is being restored after 20 years of no use due to neglect. But now it is being brought back to life! The railway line is of course incredibly overgrown in some areas, so it is important for the environmental management team to know what is growing where in terms of vegetation and who is living where in terms of wildlife like nesting birds etc. The track is 60km long and therefore it would take a very long time to do an ecological impact assessment along such a long stretch. This is where drones and integrated ground data capture solutions come in. By building a high resolution 3D digital twin of the railway line using drone captured imagery, we are able to isolate areas of interest, areas of importance and potential highly sensitive areas along the way using GIS processing tools, machine learning algorithms and ground truthing. We are also able to quantify how much vegetation will need to be removed and plan accordingly in terms of difficulty and methods of removal.
- Here is a quick video to explain the process in a little more detail:
- FREE Drone GIS Course available here:
FREE Mini Course - GEOWing Academy
GeoWing Academy FREE Mini Course on open source drone photogrammetry (WebODM) and Geographic Information Systems Software QGIS training
