The UAV Green project, sponsored by Corporación Tecnológica de Andalucía (CTA), would allow savings of 10% in the maintenance of parks and gardens in cities
The Sando business group, through its environment subsidiary, Althenia, in conjunction with the University of Malaga and the company Nadir, has started up a Technical Feasibility Study, entitled UAV-Green, for park and garden maintenance using drones. The project is funded by Corporación Tecnológica de Andalucía (CTA).
The UAV-Green project pursues incorporating new technologies in the management of the green spaces enabling more efficient, safer and more thorough maintenance resulting in costs savings. At present, parks and gardens services in cities are very costly which could be reduced by up to 10% with this project.
The study combines the use of drones, in which Sando has a great experience, with the use of thermal imaging cameras, multispectral sensors and software to process the relevant data provided by these systems.
Merging this technology allows classifying the terrain and generating thematic maps that favour studying essential parameters such as the amount of water contained in a piece of land, the state of the vegetation or the existence of diseases.
On-board sensors in drones capture information at thresholds not perceived by the human eye that enable the early detection of pests, hydric stress or risk of flooding. This information is detected virtually in real time and allows developing a faster, more effective and global management of the piece of land.
The technical manager of Building and Civil Works of CTA, Carlos García, stresses that “the deployment of drones by Sando has allowed a considerable reduction in the production of georeferenced information of very high quality and frequency, facilitating much more precise and efficient management of the territory and its resources, with significant costs savings and evolving towards a predictive maintenance model of the urban space and of green spaces”. In his view, the UAV Green project “is one more step in the implementation of the latest technologies to obtain relevant information for the management of green spaces and offering a complete maintenance service efficiently and sustainably”.
The UAV Green Technical Feasibility Study, developed by Althenia, the University of Malaga (through the Biodiversity, Conservation and Plant Resources research group, code PAIDI MRI-115, whose research lines include Plant Mapping) and the technological company Nadir, specialised in Geomatics, are funded by Corporación Tecnológica de Andalucía. CTA has funded several Sando R&D&i projects and feasibility studies in innovation areas such as application of drones to civil works or to the management of coastal areas, improvements in maintenance works of urban environments or sensors dedicated to the maintenance and management of railways, among others.
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