Drones in mobile application for urban planning

Purpose and goal

The goal was to create an efficient workflow from data capture to usage of generated 3D models by city administrators. It was a collaboration between Bentley Systems as the technical party and the city of Norrköping as implementing party. The project was successful in proving that the city can be self-sufficient in data capturing from UAV and creation of 3D models. The technical platform developed did reach majority of the goals but requires additional development to improve the workflow and performance of the system.

Expected results and effects

Expected results were a more realistic and current visualization of existing environment and buildings and better documentation for decision making in urban planning processes. Better decision-making leads to shorter processes and reduced costs. However, due to the long processes of urban planning, the results of the project efforts have yet to be proven. There are indications that the workflow for geodata creation can change how the city works with 3D, and early tests with public communication has shown good results.

Planned approach and implementation

The methodology for defining flight paths, camera settings, processing tool chain and settings to create 3D-models from the UAV data have been developed. Test flights over different types of urban and rural landscapes were performed with success. Optimization of the generated 3D models is still an open issue. A cloud based graphical interface was developed with upload and seam tools to merge datasets from UAV with a city-wide 3D model. A mobile interface and 360-video exporting tools were also developed as planned.