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UK: Skyports Partner with Ground Control to Launch Drone Survey for Network Rail

Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices, a glob­al leader in drone deliv­er­ies, sur­veys and mon­i­tor­ing, announced this week a part­ner­ship with Ground Con­trol, a UK envi­ron­men­tal main­te­nance and bio­di­ver­si­ty com­pa­ny, to begin a new drone sur­vey and AI data cap­ture ser­vice for Net­work Rail.

The release explains, “By cap­tur­ing mis­sion-crit­i­cal envi­ron­men­tal data, veg­e­ta­tion encroach­ment, tree type and health, the ser­vice enables the UK rail­way infra­struc­ture own­er to make data-led deci­sions on their veg­e­ta­tion man­age­ment, reduce impact on bio­di­ver­si­ty, respond rapid­ly to risks and lim­it delays for rail-users.”

It con­tin­ues, “Net­work Rail has over 10,000 miles of rail­ways to man­age and main­tain. Man­ag­ing veg­e­ta­tion must strike a bal­ance between keep­ing rail­way lines clear and safe, while pro­tect­ing nat­ur­al habi­tats. With­in the next 18 months it will become manda­to­ry to pro­tect and improve nat­ur­al habi­tats around the UK.”

The announce­ment fol­lows a col­lab­o­ra­tive tri­al peri­od last year in Corn­wall, when the two per­formed asset inspec­tion and data cap­ture flights for eco­log­i­cal sur­vey, veg­e­ta­tion and plant health mon­i­tor­ing, as well as to iden­ti­fy tree species. 

The part­ner­ship aims to roll out this new ser­vice to rail, roads and pow­er trans­mis­sion as well as dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­nies across the UK and Ire­land.

Sky­ports is to deploy its Stel­laire (pre­vi­ous­ly Field) Explor­er drone. The craft, which was added to the ser­vice fleet in Decem­ber, is spe­cial­ly designed for lin­ear infra­struc­ture inspec­tion and capa­ble of simul­ta­ne­ous­ly cap­tur­ing a range of datasets, includ­ing nadir and oblique images, ther­mal images and LiDAR.

Peter Stir­ratt, Sky­ports Sur­vey & Inspec­tion Project Lead, remarked, “The adop­tion of this new tech­nol­o­gy by Net­work Rail is a tes­ta­ment to the industry’s readi­ness to embrace inno­va­tion and find alter­na­tive solu­tions that are faster, more sus­tain­able and safer. We look for­ward to expand­ing our ser­vice with Ground Con­trol to con­tin­ue to demon­strate how drone ser­vices can trans­form data cap­ture capa­bil­i­ties.”

Austin Brown, Infra­struc­ture Direc­tor at Ground Con­trol, added, “Hav­ing the abil­i­ty to col­lect a mul­ti­tude of high-qual­i­ty data will allow our clients and oper­a­tional teams to make bet­ter informed deci­sions, while improv­ing safe­ty, envi­ron­men­tal and finan­cial per­for­mance.”

Back­ground

The release states “Tra­di­tion­al meth­ods of con­duct­ing veg­e­ta­tion sur­veys of rail­ways come with sev­er­al down­sides. Be it the risks to per­son­nel access­ing dan­ger­ous rail­way set­tings, the lim­i­ta­tions of fly­ing heli­copters in poor weath­er, or the lim­it­ed data cap­ture capa­bil­i­ties on man­u­al­ly con­trolled drones.”

It con­tin­ues, “Unlike exist­ing meth­ods, the part­ners’ craft and data ana­lyt­ics sys­tem is ful­ly auto­mat­ed, capa­ble of being flown Beyond Visu­al Line of Sight (BVLOS), and car­ries mul­ti­ple sen­sors capa­ble of simul­ta­ne­ous­ly cap­tur­ing a range of data.”

The data col­lect­ed is instan­ta­neous­ly uploaded to Stellaire’s ana­lyt­ics suite where Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence is used to pro­vide “near real-time insights, depend­ing on cus­tomer require­ments.” 

These insights can be as detailed as sin­gle-tree analy­sis, which can iden­ti­fy species, tree height, crown radius and health. This data enables risk-based analy­sis and informed deci­sions on veg­e­ta­tion man­age­ment, while mit­i­gat­ing against dam­age to nat­ur­al habi­tats and reduc­ing time and cost.

For more infor­ma­tion

www.skyportsdroneservices.com

https://www.ground-control.co.uk

(Images: Sky­ports)

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