Drone Surveying: How Surveyors Overcome the Data Deluge
In the drone surveying industry, like in many other industries, data is becoming more important than ever. As survey results become more accurate and detailed, UAV survey companies will have to handle larger amounts of data. Those companies that are able to keep up with the data deluge will be able to provide their clients with unprecedented levels of business value, delivered without delay. At the same time, companies that aren’t properly prepared for exponential data growth will find themselves overwhelmed, and the surveys they collect will be of little value to their clients.
As a result, project managers that need to hire a drone surveying provider should stop thinking about potential providers as drone companies, and start thinking about them as data companies that happen to use drones. This post will explore what that shift in perspective entails.
Transfer and process data quickly
Capturing data during the initial UAV survey is certainly important, as getting the survey right is integral to eventually getting the project right. However, once the data has been captured, speed becomes the new priority.
If a surveying provider can transfer data from the field with no latency—a real challenge in the age of massive data growth—and automate key aspects of the initial processing, then they can provide their clients with a useable product in less than 24 hours. This ensures that the land surveying process won’t form a bottleneck that prevents the project from being completed on time and under budget.
Make data easy to store and access
Even after the data has gone through initial processing, surveying providers can offer their customers greater business value by helping them store that data. Many surveyors provide cloud storage options for their customers. As a result, those customers can feel confident they’ll always have the storage capacity they need, without having to build the storage infrastructure themselves.
In addition, a cloud storage platform can be used to ensure universal access to the stakeholders who need it, from any place and on any device. Ideally, the surveyor will allow users to access the data they need in a non-proprietary web interface.
Make it easy to find key insights hidden in data
One of the greatest challenges any organization can face when it comes to data is separating the data that’s pertinent to a particular project from the data that isn’t. As the amount of data entering systems continues to skyrocket, this will only continue to become more difficult.
Surveying providers can help their customers tackle this issue by creating advanced algorithms that help automate this process. Instead of requiring users to manually comb through mountains of data looking for the bits that interest them—an extremely time-consuming and expensive process—these algorithms do most of the heavy lifting, leaving the clients with only the data they need.
Create the ideal infrastructure for managing data
One of the reasons it’s so important for surveyors to provide data services to their customers is that it’s simply not practical for a customer to build a hardware infrastructure to manage that data themselves. The rate of data growth is so rapid that it increasingly makes sense for a few service providers to manage data on behalf of their customers, taking advantage of economies of scale.
Surveying providers are able to provide top-of-the-line data management infrastructures, based on the latest hardware, because managing their customers’ data is an integral part of their business. This allows them to develop expertise and efficiencies that customers would never be able to develop on their own while keeping up with the latest changes in land surveying.
Final thoughts
In an era increasingly defined by data, it’s no longer enough for a surveyor to simply capture data for their customers and then leave them to their own devices. To learn more about how a data-savvy drone surveying provider can create important benefits for your project, contact us at Landpoint today.
