The challenge

In June 2016, a small team set off from the UK to undertake an ambitious scientific survey of Iceland’s Flaájökull glacier. Their goal was to accurately map how much the glacier moved and melted in a very short period, so they could discover how weather affected its stability. This meant the team had to collect a huge volume of precise data in only three short weeks.

The project was self-funded by a young team on a shoestring budget, not an academic or specialist organisation. The team thought that Drone technology could capture the data, but they didn’t know if it was possible in such a short time with tight cost constraints.

They had no specialist drone skills, so they knew that technical support would be a crucial factor when they were 1,000 miles from home. The slightest technical issue could have derailed the whole project, so the team needed a drone partner they could rely on.

Their goal from the outset was to push the boundaries of scientific research by testing whether drone technology could capture world class data more accurately, in a shorter time and for less cost than had been done before.

The approach

To meet the challenging targets of their expedition, the team chose an advanced mapping drone that could operate autonomously for long periods without human intervention, equipped with cutting-edge Pix4D mapping software to instantly produce 3D models with unrivalled levels of accuracy.

The drone’s built-in software allowed the UAV to create its own flight path and timings for photographs. This highly automated solution was essential, as the team’s four members needed to focus their limited time on monitoring environmental data and weather changes, not manually piloting the drone.

After flying the drone twice daily for three weeks, the team had gathered 13,376 images and 38 models from the Pix4D software. They selected three 8cm/px resolution models split evenly over a thirteen-day period, to monitor the glacier’s movement over two seven-day periods that experienced a range of weather systems, to see how the glacier reacted to weather changes. The team also closely monitored rainfall and air temperature, which are two of the largest environmental influences on a glacier’s stability.

Using the Pix4D models, they created the ortho-mosaic below, which places the three models on top of each other to show the glacier’s ice surface area over 13 days, using control points to guarantee accuracy.

The accuracy of the Pix4D models helped the team discover that the glacier lost 23,753.07 square metres of surface ice in week one, which was warmer and wetter, but only 5,665.75 square metres in the second week, which was cooler and drier, suggesting that the glacier reacts dramatically over short time periods to changes in weather.

They also used the Pix4D models to create transects which showed the glacier’s movement more accurately than other airborne or space borne modelling techniques. These showed some surprising behaviour. Although there was no horizontal movement, the amount of vertical movement was unexpected. The glacier’s surface rose by as much as one metre in the first week, due to the volume of meltwater below the glacier, but in week two it fell below the level measured on day one, due to a decrease in meltwater caused by colder temperatures and less rainfall.

Pix4D accuracy was a critical success factor

The accuracy of Pix4D was what made this project possible. The image below is one of the highly accurate point cloud models generated by Pix4D. It’s made up of more than 160,000,000 points, produced in a geo-accurate location by overlapping each individual point in three to eight photos and subsequent logarithms. The resolution is down to 8cm on this model, providing one of the world’s most accurate 3D models of a glacier.

Support from drone partner was vital in the field

At a key moment in the project, the team faced a potential disaster when the drone seemed unable to charge itself. If the drone had lost power, the whole project would have failed. With no engineer on the expedition, the team contacted their drone partner who quickly diagnosed the problem and provided a solution. It was simply human error rather than a technical fault, so no time was lost and the team could get straight back to work.

The results

The expedition’s ambitious goal was to conduct a leading scientific expedition that captured world class data and pushed the boundaries of drone mapping technology for scientific research. On all counts, the project was a resounding success.

The young team collected outstanding data to an unprecedented level of accuracy, in a very short timeframe and on a shoestring budget. Without any specialist skills, the expedition produced one of the world’s most accurate 3D models of a glacier, thanks to its choice of Pix4D software.

The expedition worked because the team made the right choices: The right drone, the right mapping software and a drone partner with the specialist knowledge they lacked, who could put all the pieces of the technical jigsaw together and support them every step of the way.

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