About the service
I offer a mobile, field-ready drone survey service focused specifically on lakefront and riverbank shoreline erosion — the kind of work that needs both piloting skill and a trained eye for reading a bank line. My rig fits in a single vehicle and deploys from boat launches, gravel pull-offs, or private docks, so I can reach shoreline segments that a fixed-wing survey or a land crew would struggle to access on foot.
Every flight follows a systematic corridor pattern along the water's edge, with overlapping high-resolution stills and video captured at a consistent altitude and oblique angle so the bank face, toe, and vegetation line are all legible in the same pass. I pay close attention to water level at the moment of capture, because a survey taken at the wrong stage can make a stable bank look like it is failing, or hide active undercutting below a flooded toe. Where a client has older imagery, surveys, or even hand sketches of the same reach, I register my new flight to that baseline so the comparison shows real, measurable change rather than an artifact of a different camera angle.
Deliverables are built to be used, not just looked at: a georeferenced orthomosaic of the surveyed reach, annotated stills marking scarps, slumps, exposed root mats, and active undercuts, and a written erosion-rate summary comparing the new capture against the baseline where one exists. I flag seasonal considerations up front — leaf-out timing, recent storm or high-water events, and ice conditions on northern shorelines — because the same stretch of bank can read very differently a month apart, and a report that ignores that context misleads more than it informs.
Typical turnaround is a matter of days from flight to final report, with raw imagery archived so a future comparison flight has something solid to measure against. I work with property owners, marinas, campground and park managers, and engineers who need field evidence before recommending riprap, vegetation, or structural intervention. Message me with the shoreline length, access points, and why you need the data, and I will quote a fixed price and timeline.
Every flight follows a systematic corridor pattern along the water's edge, with overlapping high-resolution stills and video captured at a consistent altitude and oblique angle so the bank face, toe, and vegetation line are all legible in the same pass. I pay close attention to water level at the moment of capture, because a survey taken at the wrong stage can make a stable bank look like it is failing, or hide active undercutting below a flooded toe. Where a client has older imagery, surveys, or even hand sketches of the same reach, I register my new flight to that baseline so the comparison shows real, measurable change rather than an artifact of a different camera angle.
Deliverables are built to be used, not just looked at: a georeferenced orthomosaic of the surveyed reach, annotated stills marking scarps, slumps, exposed root mats, and active undercuts, and a written erosion-rate summary comparing the new capture against the baseline where one exists. I flag seasonal considerations up front — leaf-out timing, recent storm or high-water events, and ice conditions on northern shorelines — because the same stretch of bank can read very differently a month apart, and a report that ignores that context misleads more than it informs.
Typical turnaround is a matter of days from flight to final report, with raw imagery archived so a future comparison flight has something solid to measure against. I work with property owners, marinas, campground and park managers, and engineers who need field evidence before recommending riprap, vegetation, or structural intervention. Message me with the shoreline length, access points, and why you need the data, and I will quote a fixed price and timeline.
