Surveying Beaches and Coastlines with Drones
Benjamin Ritt is a drone pilot from Texas, who has been utilizing a variety of drone technology to survey beaches and coastlines.
During our chat, Benjamin offered up a dataset for us to download and try our hand at coastal mapping. If you’d like to download that dataset for free, simply drop your name and email below, and we’ll send it to you ASAP!
We’ve been drone mapping for a long time now, however since we are landlocked we don’t often have the opportunity to map shorelines or really anything to do with water. That’s where Benjamin Ritt comes in!
As we chat with Ben, he reveals his workflow, and how he overcomes the obstacle of mapping a moving body such as water. When everything sits still it’s far easier than when it’s moving, is reflective, sometimes lets you see through it depending on the angle, etc.
Some of the drones that Benjamin has used for this include the DJI Phantom 4 Pro, Phantom 4 Pro RTK, as well as the Wingtra VTOL fixed wing drone. Listen in as he describes the benefits of each when it comes to mapping.
Mapping anywhere from 1 to 10 miles of coastal beach is no easy task, and in this episode, Ben describes exactly how he does it. You’ll learn everything from planning and flight, to post processing technique. FYI, he is processing his maps with Agisoft Metashape and Pix4D, while capturing data with GSPro.
Check out Ben’s work…
You can find Ben at Unmanned Coastal Solutions.
Thanks for listening!
I hope you enjoyed our discussion with Benjamin Ritt! If you like what you hear, be sure to subscribe in your favourite podcast player, and share it with your other drone friends 🙂
Also, don’t forget to download the free dataset that Ben so kindly provided to us. The link to download is at the top of this post.
Thanks again for listening 🙏