All posts by Juan B. Plaza
Embracing the Drone Revolution
Surveyor business models changing in the BVLOS era Over the past few months, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), working with the drone industry, academia, and general aviation membership organizations such as AOPA (www.aopa.org) and NBAA (www.nbaa.org), has been able to advance the cause of uncrewed flights beyond visual line of sight of the operator (BVLOS). ...
The Challenge of Channeling Water
From the Romans to the Everglades, the art of directing water flow has never been easy For thousands of years impromptu land surveyors tried, sometimes successfully, to force water to flow in a direction it did not want to go. This was done to help grow crops in areas where water was not abundant enough...
UAVs and Living Data
Digital twins are becoming important data for buildings and infrastructure in cities, but a utility in Chile is twinning its power corridors and adding seemingly unrelated data to identify, predict, and avoid power outages. We live in an era of combining technologies. For the past few decades, we have witnessed the most impressive movement of...
Final Approach
The demise of a great mapping platform With the advent and adoption of new technologies, we are quick to forget about the old ways we used to do things. In the case of pocket calculators or disposable cameras is not relevant to reminisce about the past, but when the time comes to dispose of a...
Mapping the Surface of the Ocean?
It is crucial that we keep accurate maps of the ocean’s shorelines, but when my company got a request to map the ocean’s surface 50 miles out in the Gulf of Mexico, my initial reaction was: Why? Isn’t the ocean just the ocean that far out? There aren’t any geographic features or elevation changes. It’s...
Drones in Construction
For decades the construction industry didn’t change much-and then UAV technologies came along Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones, as they are commonly called, are mostly electric-powered aircraft, which do not require a pilot onboard and are used to perform tasks that are either too dangerous for humans to do or too expensive with other...
