Unmanned Aerial Systems: Eyes in the Sky for the Future of Geohazards
By Niles Koenigsberg and Quentin Boose, Process Improvement Interns
April 2, 2019
This is a follow-up piece to a previous article written on CDOT’s UAS usage.
CDOT Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) with attached camera collecting data
A decade ago, unmanned aerial systems (UAS) used to be a foreign concept in transportation technology, reserved for the Army and the devoted aerial hobbyist. However, in recent years, the use of UAS has exploded. The machine portion of UAS, known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), can be witnessed whizzing around sports fields, concerts, and maybe your neighborhood park.The benefits of UAS are easily observed: from maneuvering under bridges for inspections to examining rock slide damage from a distance, UAS can effortlessly film around Colorado by reaching places previously unreached.
It comes to no surprise that UAS was chosen to be one of the Federal Highway Administration’s ten innovations to rapidly deploy in 2019 and 2020. Every Day Counts (EDC) is a national program which aims to accelerate the implementation of high performance discoveries across the United States providing funding and “an on-ramp to innovation.” The Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) has been at the forefront of UAS deployment, already using state-of-the-art Unmanned Aerial Systems improve our organization and Colorado as a whole, and has been for some time, using the vehicles primarily in geohazard mapping.
Former CDOT-ers using model airplanes to gather footage in 2001
CDOT’s Geohazards program looks at roadway sections across the state to provide mitigation design and review for areas deemed at-risk for sinkholes, rockfalls, and landslides. This Department has been a pioneer in the field of UAS technology, as they began to implement aerial technology over 20 years ago to survey high risk locations. “We’re able to capture large amounts of data in an entire corridor in a short amount of time,” said Ty Oritz, the Geohazards Program Manager. “All that data helps us understand where and how to mitigate those geological hazards,” he explains.
Because of the rapid advancement in UAV technology in the past few years, CDOT’s Geohazards program has contracted the work to outside vendors. “It’s more cost effective and it removes a lot of the liability, as these vendors have their own insurance and certifications,” said Beau Taylor, a Physical Science Researcher at CDOT. “UAS technology keeps moving forward and changing. Newer drones have newer sensors and capabilities and higher prices; it’s a bit much to keep up with those changes every 2 years.” Outside vendors have needed to constantly upgrade their UAVs to keep pace with all the advancements -- going through four different platforms in just three years
Modern UAS used by the CDOT Geohazards team to create 3D maps
One of the outside vendors Ortiz calls upon is Aerial Applications Colorado, a subcontractor owned and operated by Ty and Tina Trulove. The Truloves are hired to collect data and construct 3 dimensional maps for CDOT. These maps are used during bridge closures to monitor traffic flow, to review roadway damage, and provide the geohazards team with data for their mitigation design. “If CDOT has a small area of rockfall or landslide, we go out to that section, collect the data from a drone overhead, then we come back in and process the data to quantify cut-and-fill, how much land has filled, and so forth,” Trulove concluded.
The information provided by the UAVs is indispensable, and with a rapidly emerging field, it’s difficult to predict what the future holds for unmanned aerial technology. Ground penetrating sensors and LiDAR lasers make it possible to gather even more precise imagery of Colorado’s landscape, granting the Geohazards team the ability to measure and detect hotspots.
CDOT is currently looking to expand UAS usage in the next two years through the EDC initiative, with the goal of institutionalizing statewide use of UAS technologies. These tools are undoubtedly leading the future in roadway hazard mitigation and visualization and CDOT plans to capitalize on its demonstrated safety and efficiency improvements.