Terra Drone Aids Port Flooding Survey in Djibouti

A key harbor in the African nation of Djibouti is safer from flooding threats thanks to Japanese drone provider Terra Drone Corporation.

The company’s European division recently completed a five-day aerial survey of the Doraleh, one of Djibouti’s busiest ports. The high-resolution photogrammetric pavement assessment covered the city’s quay walls and sea defense revetments.

Terra Drone launched a multi-rotor UAV at an altitude of 246 feet – a mission the company said was a challenge because the height of container cranes at the site was even more than the height at which the drone’s flight path – depending on the position of the boom, the cranes could soar up to 280 feet.

The flight data will allow Djibouti officials to identify the high and low spots of the harbor pavements. Topographic data will guide the creation of a new drainage plans for port owners. The aerial photogrammetric pavement assessment will also be used to inspect the overall condition of the port.

A Terra Drone spokesperson noted:

“Traditionally, this kind of survey would have been conducted using a leveling device. That technique would have taken a lot of time and yielded only 1 point per 5 meters. The drone survey, on the other hand, produced over 20,000 height measurements per square meter.”

The contract is yet another feather in Terra Drone’s corporate cap:

• May: Established Terra Drone Angola after receiving multiple contracts from major oil and gas companies in West Africa.
• February: Entered the “relatively unexplored territory of the Indian Industrial UAV market” with Terra Drone India. “The market is brimming with potential: we’ll help industries streamline their workflows with Terra Drone’s latest state-of the art UAV technology backed with strong artificial intelligence,” said Prateek Srivastava, CEO of Terra Drone India.
• January: Created a partnership with Sibanye-Stillwater, the largest producer of gold in South Africa, to provide inspection drone services.
• December: Bought a major stake in Australian data firm C4D Intel.
• October: Joined forces with Unifly to create a drone traffic management system for Hitachi.
• 2017: Launched new image processing software – Terra Mapper – to optimize drone surveying services. The platform is an automated drone navigation, image processing, and 3D image analysis program that is available in both cloud and desktop versions.