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Coordinate a drone operation

Drones allow you to quickly capture high-resolution imagery of important assets and locations. With drone imagery, you can get timely and crucial insights such as potential structural damage, change detection, or project status. A drone operation must run smoothly and efficiently to make the most out of your team's investment and labor when collecting and processing data.

Coordinating a drone operation with multiple pilots and vehicles, multiple locations, and various time periods can present challenges. Who is flying when? Were they approved to fly a requested area? Can you task a team to fly a particular location? These are some of the questions that can be addressed through the interconnectedness of ArcGIS. A team of pilots is a mobile workforce that will need to be assigned tasks and have progress monitored. ArcGIS has solutions designed for this type of work in the field. All drone operations in the field can then be displayed on a shareable and authoritative dashboard.

ArcGIS Flight provides flight planning which can also be supported by other ArcGIS apps such as ArcGIS Workforce, ArcGIS Field Maps, ArcGIS Experience Builder, and ArcGIS Dashboards to provide a comprehensive picture of your drone operations. A combination of these apps can allow decision makers, dispatchers, and other key stakeholders to coordinate a drone operation.

Review the process to coordinate a drone operation using the robust capabilities across ArcGIS:

  1. Starting your project in ArcGIS Online—Create authoritative project maps to allow dispatchers to assign tasks to pilots in your ArcGIS organization.
  2. Tasking drone pilots—Create a Workforce project within your ArcGIS Online organization that uses project maps and data of your area of interest, and assign and dispatch pilots through ArcGIS Workforce. Workforce allows you to assign specific areas that can be used in the field. Once in the field, ArcGIS Workforce integrates with ArcGIS Field Maps to allow pilots to capture ground control points with high-accuracy GNSS devices. This step is crucial if high geographic accuracy is important to your mission.
  3. Collecting drone imagery—Drone pilots will gather consistent data in the field using ArcGIS Flight. ArcGIS Flight can use existing features such as dispatcher-assigned polygons or corridors to create flight plans.
  4. Processing imagery in Site Scan, Drone2Map or ArcGIS Reality for ArcGIS Pro—Use Site Scan as a SaaS to process the imagery and publish it to other ArcGIS apps such as ArcGIS Dashboards or Experience Builder apps. Drone2Map provides drone processing and publishing as a stand alone desktop app. ArcGIS Reality for ArcGIS Pro provides drone processing and publishing using the ArcGIS Pro interface.
  5. Creating applications and dashboards to inform decision makers of tasking progress—Use ArcGIS Experience Builder to help monitor metrics on flight progress and completion. Monitor which pilots are in the field and which flights they have completed. View published and processed imagery from the dashboard.

Explore the following resources to learn more about coordinating drone operations in ArcGIS.

Note:

To use this workflow, you'll need an ArcGIS Online subscription account to sign in and create project maps, which you can use to task pilots and assign specific areas. Alternatively, this can also be performed using ArcGIS Enterprise. To collect, you'll need ArcGIS Flight. To process and publish imagery you'll need Site Scan for ArcGIS, Drone2Map or ArcGIS Reality for ArcGIS Online. To provide customized experience and manage multiple projects you'll needArcGIS Experience Builder, ArcGIS Workforce, and ArcGIS Dashboards. ArcGIS Field Maps and ArcGIS Workforce are required for pilots to collect the drone data in the field.

ArcGIS help

Review the following supplemental guidance about concepts, software functionality, and workflows:

ArcGIS blog articles

Review the following supplemental guidance about concepts, software functionality, and workflows:

Videos

Watch a video that provides details on preplanning drone flights with polygons that can be accessed using the Field Maps app or ArcGIS Flight.

Training and tutorials

In the Collect Data in the Field Using ArcGIS Apps Learning Plan, learn how to streamline field management workflows using ArcGIS Online and apps such as ArcGIS Field Maps and ArcGIS Dashboards.

Technical support

Documentation for Site Scan for ArcGIS is available from the Esri Support Knowledge Base. Start with the following resources:

Esri Community

Visit the Esri Imagery and Remote Sensing community to connect, collaborate, and share experiences about coordinating a drone operation.