GIS595/MEA792:
UAV/lidar Data Analytics

This is an unmaintained course material, please see current material at:

Flight plan preparation

Considering the technical, meteorological and legal conditions of the possible flight area choice, you shouldn’t forget about the most important element: the aim and purpose of the flight.

In this assigment you need to justify the choice of the flight area and prove that the geographical aln legal conditions allow for a save flight execution. You will present your idea to the collegues, so try to find an interesting research problem. The presentation needs to be short (2-3min, just couple slides) and doesn’t need to include all the information from the assignment. Maps and photos highly

If you need you can attach to the assignment a photo, figure or map.

  1. Motivation
    • Why do you want to fly over this area? (state the research problem)
      • what problem are you aiming to solve,
      • what research question to answer,
      • or what object or phenomenon to investigate
  2. Flight planning in Trimble Aerial Imaging
  3. GIS analysis of flight plan using lidar-based DSM
    • Chosen take off location (short description helping with localization of the spot)
    • Chosen landing location (short description helping with localization of the spot)
    • Alternate landing location (short description helping with localization of the spot)
    • Coordinates of the take-off and landing locations
    • Property of the ground (public, private - is there permission from the landowner?)
    • Accessibility of the take-off location (brief description of possible obstacles or difficulties to get to the area or set the launcher)
    • Formal possibilities of flight execution (does this area have COA, who obtained it, what is the status of the area according to the aeronautical charts
  4. Relief conditions and possibilities of safe flight execution
    • Targeted area (ha or sq. km)
    • Area radius (distance between the ground station location and the furthest spot to be mapped
    • Elevation differences between the Digital Surface Model and the flight ceiling (in GIS)
    • Brief description of geographical conditions (topography, land use, terrain obstacles, ground activity etc.)
  5. Flight parameters
    • Desired resolution (for orthophoto or DSM)
    • Desired overlap
  6. Attachments
    1. Map of the flight area with following elements indicated
      • Take off and landing locations
      • Safe, obstacle free take off and landing
      • Borders of the desired mapping area
      • Ground station radius
    2. Flight plan file (.gwt files)
    3. Presentation