Suitability of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Cadastral Surveys

Abstract

Cadastral surveys in Ghana often employ well known surveying equipment such as Total Station and GNSS or a combination of both. These survey techniques are well-established and widely accepted. However, there are limitations in certain cases. In situations where difficult terrain and inaccessible areas are encountered as well as poor satellite reception, or when surveyor’s life may be at risk, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) could be used to overcome the limitations of these well-established survey methods. This research used high resolution images from UAV (DJI Phantom 4) to survey plots of land at Government Hill at the University of Mines and Technology and extracted coordinates of the boundary points using Agisoft Photoscan. GNSS surveys was also used to obtain the data of the same boundary points to compare and to establish accurate ground control points for georeferencing. The coordinates obtained from both UAV and GNSS Surveys were used to prepare cadastral plans and compared. The difference in Northings and Eastings from UAV and GNSS surveys were +0.380 cm and +0.351 cm respectively. This research therefore concludes that high resolution images from UAVs are suitable for cadastral surveying.