Hello everyone, this is my first blog post. My name is Keith Menezes, 4th year Space Engineering student at the Lassonde School of Engineering, York University. My areas of interest are in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (commonly called drones) and Nanosatellite technology. I started working on side projects based on these subjects in December 2014 (in my second year).

I joined the Esri Canada GIS Centres of Excellence because Esri provides processing tools and workflows that seamlessly handle vast amounts of UAV imagery to produce geospatial cloud solutions required for clientele. I will soon start developing an understanding of Drone2Map for ArcGIS which I intend to use for creating 2D/3D maps, monitor change, and to perform inspections.

I’m especially interested in UAV applications for: mapping, remote sensing, agriculture monitoring, package delivery, search and rescue, and inspection of infrastructure for the civil/energy sectors.

Surface water mapping project using sUAVs in Fort Chipewyan, Alberta

Surface water mapping project using sUAVs in the Wood Buffalo National Park of Canada and Peace-Athabasca River Delta of Fort Chipewyan, AB. (2015)

UAVs fly much closer to the ground, compared to satellites, making them much more capable of providing high resolution imagery and at a significantly lower cost. My prediction is in the next five to ten years, every survey company and many GIS organizations will own and operate small UAVs for a multitude of industry applications. UAVs can be operated in a fraction of the time it takes to set-up and deploy a traditional land survey equipment and it only takes about 3-4 days to collect UAV imagery and another 3-4 days to process/deliver geospatial solutions.

I could go on for days about UAVs and industry applications. So I will try to limit myself by this one post and a follow up. For now, here’s a redirection to my profile.