A Typical SAR Aerial Mapping Mission Workflow

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An aerial mapping mission in a recovery operation is a systematic process designed to efficiently clear large areas and identify clues that may be invisible from the ground.

 

Step 1: Pre-Flight Planning and Assessment 🗺️

 

Before any drone takes flight, the team conducts a thorough evaluation of the search area.

• Define Boundaries: The first task is to establish a clear search grid or boundary. This ensures a methodical search and prevents any areas from being missed.

• Evaluate Terrain: The topography is analyzed to determine the best flight plan. For missions in hilly or mountainous regions, Terrain Follow is a critical feature that allows the drone to maintain a consistent altitude above the ground, ensuring uniform image resolution.

• Determine RTK Use: For maximum accuracy, the team decides if Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) positioning is needed. In recovery mapping, RTK is used to create centimeter-accurate maps, which is vital for pinpointing the exact location of discovered clues.

 

Step 2: Drone and Payload Selection 🚁

 

The choice of drone and sensor depends entirely on the specific goals of the search.

• RGB Mapping: To create a high-resolution visual map, an RGB camera is used. A typical flight over a 60-acre area at an altitude of 150 feet takes approximately 20+ minutes and captures around 1,000 images. This detailed map is the foundation for visual analysis. Bysides the old school Zoom and Squint. contours can be generated to any level for different goals.

• Multispectral Mapping: This sensor is used to find non-obvious clues related to vegetation. It can reveal disturbed earth or hidden paths by highlighting differences in vegetation health (a vegetation index).

• Thermal Mapping: To detect heat signatures that may indicate decomposition, a thermal camera is the primary tool. These flights are flown from 150 to 300 feet—the lower, the better for thermal resolution—with the camera pointed straight down (NADIR) to get the most accurate temperature readings.

 

Step 3: Data Offload and Processing

 

 Fly mission, then once the drone lands, the captured images are immediately offloaded and prepared for analysis using two primary workflows, often concurrently.

• Orthomosaic Stitching: The individual images are fed into photogrammetry software to be stitched together into a single, high-resolution, and geographically accurate map called an orthomosaic. This can be an IR, RGB, or Vegetation Index map.

• SAR Software Processing: The raw images are loaded into specialized SAR software designed for automated analysis. See Step 5.

 

Step 4: Manual Analysis ("Zoom and Squint") 👀

 

After the orthomosaic is processed, it is loaded onto a large 4K monitor for detailed manual review. An experienced analyst systematically pans and zooms across the entire map, a process often called the "zoom and squint." They are looking for anomalies—out-of-place colors, unnatural shapes, or any other clue that doesn't fit the natural landscape. Because every pixel is georeferenced, any anomaly can be located with precise GPS coordinates, allowing ground teams to navigate directly to a point of interest with absolute confidence.

 

Step 5: Automated Analysis with ADIAT 💻

 

When using the ADIAT (Automated Drone Image Analysis Tool), the analysis becomes a highly focused and efficient process. Instead of manually searching every pixel, the operator leverages sophisticated algorithms to screen the entire block of imaging. ADIAT’s detection algorithms process every image, searching for anomalies. The software flags these areas of interest and presents them to the analyst for manual review. This transforms the tedious "zoom and squint" of an entire map into a much faster process of verifying a targeted list of high-probability images. Crucially, ADIAT was built to run without requiring internet connectivity, ensuring it can be deployed effectively in any environment.