In Addition to Data, Competence is Needed

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It's getting easier and cheaper to get high-quality, high-resolution orthophotos using drones. Relatively inexpensive quadcopter can be flown according to flight plans that provide the necessary overlap and side-lap. Drone processing software are available online, some for free. More people can definitely generate useful maps (not just pictures) using drones.

Using those maps, however, still requires subject-specific competence - and competence in dealing with political/social/institutional matters.  

The orthophoto above shows a local community in Cebu City that could benefit from public land titling, particularly the Residential Free Patent. This was taken with a DJI Phantom IV Pro that flew at 75 meters.  The image was processed using DroneDeploy. It took less than 24 hours to fly over the area and process the photos into one orthophoto.

Public land titling experts who looked at records related to this site said that part of this area has already been surveyed, while part is actually newly reclaimed land. The surveyed part be subdivided, as required for the issuance of Residential Free Patents.  The still-unsurveyed part will require more work - surveying, issuance of a Presidential Declaration, etc. 

The same principle applies to using drone-generated photos for Disaster Risk Reduction, infrastructure monitoring, or other applications.  Optimal use of drone orthophotos will require availability of expertise in interpreting the data, factoring in other information, and moving towards the development objective. In a broader sense, beyond drone photos: data will not be enough; expertise will always be needed.








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