How New Aerial Survey Technology Helps Coastal Engineering Firms

Three ways Aerial Surveys help Coastal Engineers.

F.A.S.T. owner Andrew Kobza makes an… interesting analogy.

Coastal projects are extremely complex works of engineering. Blending nature and humanity, a successful coastal engineering project is like an art piece. Harmony between man and nature, earth and sea. The challenge lies in getting valuable data and knowing that data is accurate. It also helps to monitor the work being carried out, ensuring your design is being constructed to its specifications.

In our analogy of coastal engineering being a art piece, Florida Aerial Survey Technologies can be likened to a curator. You tell us where your art is, we go inspect it and preserve it. Ultimately we ensure its longevity, history, and safety. The concept seems silly in these terms but here is what we mean in a more direct wording.

1. Inspecting the artwork: Accurate Modeling based on Aerial Survey.

Beaches, jetties, and coastal projects can be difficult to get accurate data on rapidly. Survey crews climb rocks and shoot a few hundred points on ten to a hundred acres. That’s not exactly the epitome of high accuracy data. Our surveys capture hundreds of millions to billions of points, rendering the entire beach environment.

Berms, banks, jetties, breakwaters, groins, boardwalks, condos, you name it! If it is there, we get thousands of data points on it. This data density allows our company to provide our engineering partners with vast situational awareness from month to month and year to year. We provide accurate detail on the current state of the beach before anything is moved. Detail allows for strong baseline data set at the start of your project.

Not only can you get better data in difficult areas, saving time along the way, we do so safely. This prevents unnecessary risk and lowers liability on a job.

2. Preserving the Artwork Mitigating environmental impact of beach projects.

Preservation starts the second work begins. Aerial surveys are based off of data collected by remote sensors, meaning fewer people on the ground and less disruption to sensitive areas. Not only do aerial methods assist in physically preserving beaches, but making accurate models on a regular basis allows us to provide feedback about how the job is going, overlay real data onto the design templates to ensure compliance, and alert you engineering team to any anomalies.

“Aerial surveys are based off of data collected by remote sensors, meaning fewer people on the ground and less disruption to sensitive areas.”

We also hold this data for future projects and the data itself is preserved. Data and compliance aren’t the only thing we preserve however! With an average survey turnaround of 5 days from being onsite to deliverables, we ensure your timeline is preserved as well. This saves precious time when your project is at risk of running over into a local tourist or turtle season. Our main goal is to preserve the timeline, data, and design of your job!

3. Ensuring longevity, history, and safety of the artwork And your project.

Because we take a complete reading of the area, virtually no data is missed. We see where the equipment is at on a site, what the condition of the site is, we can even see the anchor points for caution tape and at times render the tape out itself. This means not a shred of information is missed and if there is ever a question about the state of a site, our surveys provide the ultimate situational awareness.

We also preserve that data. the benefit of data preservation is that if lawsuits, catastrophic events, or even just everyday erosion occur, you have historical data. This allows you, the engineer, to have insight to the safety and timeline of completion across the entire timeline of the job for lawsuits and disputes, data on the condition of the beach before and after a catastrophic event allowing a design to be as close to pre-storm as possible, and for normal wear and tear access to data on how the beach erodes and wears.

How we help coastal engineers.

Ultimately FAST is in the business of surveying to save you money and get you the data you need to execute a job efficiently. We enable our customers to save money, save time, get more data by executing our missions effectively and efficiently. Worried about being overwhelmed by data, don’t be! We build software to help your team truly understand the data.

We serve all of Florida, the Caribbean, and other inter-state and international areas. We love the beach and have experience getting engineers data they can be passionate about. Get passionate about your data!

Andrew Kobza is a FAA Licensed UAS with nearly 10 years’ experience flying scale and full sized aircraft. He is owner of Naples Drone Solutions, a Drone Service Provider servicing all of Florida with cutting edge drone technologies, and co-owner of Florida Aerial Survey Technologies a company specializing in drone mapping applications both located in Naples, FL. He is also a graduate of The University of Florida with a B.S. Degree in Business Administration.