The drone’s eye: applications and implications for landscape architecture

Abstract

The use of next-generation automated consumer drones for aerial imaging and mapping is increasingly common. As a field that recurrently seeks new mapping methods, the practical aspects of drone imaging and mapping are most evidently applicable to landscape architecture. However, as a social art, landscape architecture also has a vested interest in the cultural implications of the consumer-oriented features of next-generation drones. This article bridges these professional and amateur domains of drone use. First, the article uses a topographically complex case study site to compare drone functionality against established imaging and mapping technologies. Second, the article interprets the potential implications of these applications on the practice and theory of landscape architecture. The article concludes that high fidelity drone mapping has the capacity to refocus contemporary landscape discourse from a predominantly satellite-based viewpoint to the site scale at which landscape is both experienced and designed.

Keywords:

• Drone
• satellite
• imaging
• mapping
• survey
• site

Notes

1. In addition to the multirotor UAV technology that is the focus of this article, fixed wing UAVs offer several advantages, including longer flight times, higher sensor payload capacities and more stable flight characteristics. However, with less portability, larger takeoff/landing zones and the inability to hover, fixed wing drones are unlikely to become as ubiquitous as multirotor consumer drones.

2. This comparison is based on satellite image resolutions of 50 cm. Since regulatory changes in 2014, Google Earth satellite image resolution has been incrementally increased in some locations to 40 cm and less frequently to 30 cm. The online aeroplane image vendor Nearmaps™ claims an image resolution of 7.5 cm.

3. Typical update rates derived from the author’s examination of Google Earth™ history function between 2012 and 2016 (inclusive), and examination of Nearmaps™ history function between 2015 and 2016 (inclusive).

4. Stereophotogrammetry is possible with as little as 50% overlap between images, although higher overlaps of over 80% provide the most accurate results (see Devriendt & Bonne, 2014).

5. Drones equipped with LiDAR sensors combine the advantages of the drone’s proximity with the precision and vegetation penetration of LiDAR. While this technology has been too expensive and heavy for general use on consumer drones, this is rapidly changing as lighter and less expensive sensors become available.

6. This notion draws on Hans Hollein’s positioning of ‘everyone as an architect’ within the all-encompassing scope of modernism’s total design, which dissolved boundaries between design scales and specialisation (Hollein, 1968).