ArcGIS Earth

 Introduction

By using drones to take images and then geotag those images you can create a mosaic of data gathered over a large area. One of the software that helps with this is ArcGIS Earth, similar to Google Earth but with much more data packed into it. It not only contains satellite images but also has elevations and distances built into the software allowing a pilot to really look into the fine details before a flight. By finding out elevation and distances a pilot can figure out flight time, required battery life, how many missions they will have to run, and a safe operating altitude.

Agriculture

ArcGIS also allows for layers to be added in over the Earth based on data that has been gathered. For example, there are some standard agricultural photos that are taken by aircraft every year in order to track vegetation health. There are two types of layers that can be helpful for those in agriculture asides from the general satellite view. There is a normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and thermal. Both kinds of them show the same information but the NDVI gives a greater depth of information to the exact health of the fields. Seen in Figure 1 where the bright orange/red fields are up in the corner and the urban and forest areas are green. Whereas Figure 2 has one of two colors really and it's teal and pink, Pink for any vegetation and teal for urban areas.

Figure 1: NDVI

Figure 2: Thermal

Wildfires

For wildfires, there are a few different layers that can be added to ArcGIS. There is one that is provided by NASA where they use satellites to look for hotspots and track where they are (Figure 3). The other is a live view of current wildfires in the US. This is seen as California is ablaze and that is currently true (Figure 4).

Figure 3: Satellite detected hotspots

Figure 4: Current Wildfires

Accuracy

The software is very accurate. Figure 5 is an RGB photo stitched together taken by the Bramore PPX and Figure 6 is the satellite view that ArcGIS provides. Looking at them side by side it is clear how accurate the software is and how well it can be relied on.

            Figures 5 and 6

Conclusion

ArcGIS is a great software that works on a very accurate scale. By having software that is so accurate one can plan missions to a foot and guarantee the safety of the mission. They can also get an accurate idea of the scale of a mission and how long it will take to complete it.