Today’s civil engineers are expected to provide more complex detail than ever during a time when excess labor takes a huge chunk out of profits. Fortunately, Direct Georeferencing (DG) has transformed the landscape of infrastructure monitoring and maintenance — and continues to innovatively evolve to meet the increasing demands of today’s civil surveyors.

Where road surveying, bridge monitoring and urban planning were once dependent upon humans using skill to master equipment in a time consuming process, DG has risen as a cost- and time-saving solution. And at Trimble, we’re committed to making it even better.

Almost akin to a superpower, Trimble is advancing DG capabilities that can be used to predict costs down the road via enhanced LiDAR and GNSS corrections technology. As LiDAR sensors improve to provide greater detail via spatial resolution, surveyors also have more control and power to deliver greater accuracy and precision due to our LiDAR point cloud post-processing solutions and our proprietary RTX positioning services. Building on DG’s enhanced accuracy and precision of spatial data, without reliance on ground control points (GCPs) to minimize errors in data collection, enhanced DG with LiDAR SLAM sensors allow for high-accuracy data collection — even in areas with poor GNSS coverage.

This advances UAV applications as well, enabling centimeter-level positioning accuracy via a cloud-based service without the need for base stations — speeding up the process and requiring fewer people.

Cost savings and time efficiency? Yes, please.

By streamlining data acquisition processes, DG enables more and better data without excessive resources or cost — or impeding traffic to perform more road surveys. Not having to go back in to line up data after collection adds to the cost efficiency. You can have a laser scan of a road, but a lack of context regarding where that road is in relation to the earth requires delving into the point cloud to locate recognizable features, then lining them up with positioning information — which is tedious and error prone when done manually. Having a DG system working in real time or in an automated workflow mitigates that extra work, with data that line right up.

Having an accurate DG solution in your vehicle that can handle issues such as multipath and outages etc., means you won’t be bogged down cleaning up data after the fact. It also means no valuable time is wasted setting up base stations or GCPs or performing additional surveys to check the quality, because that redundancy is already built in. 

Data for now, data for later

While the job at hand might be to survey infrastructure, there may be a need to refer back to it down the road, and it’s much more feasible to recycle data that’s verifiably accurate from a positioning perspective — which DG delivers. You never know what project might come in six months and they’ll come to a surveyor and say hey, what data do you have on this bridge and you can say, I have a really good survey of that bridge. With data of lesser accuracy, a second survey would likely be required.

DG data = more comprehensive analysis for informed decision-making

Collecting more data than the minimum means being able to find answer questions that you didn’t know you might eventually need during the survey. Maybe you’re later asked to inspect the guard rails in that same area to verify the integrity and make sure they aren’t degraded. If you have high accuracy and a high resolution laser scan, you can do that with the data you already captured. 

How does Trimble’s advanced DG tech aid civil engineering in real life?

Case study 1: For Fraunhofer IPM based in Freiburg, Germany, mobile mapping with DG has made easier and faster work of creating precise maps of urban streets with detailed surface information for a telecommunications company to use in preparation for fiber optic cable lines. 

To achieve this goal, they custom built a measuring system with cameras and a LiDAR system that sits on the measuring vehicle’s roof to capture mapping and surface data. Enhanced location sensing was achieved using Trimble’s Applanix® POS LV position and orientation system, utilizing integrated inertial technology to generate stable, reliable and repeatable positioning solutions — achieving accuracy within 1 centimeter. 

From there, Fraunhofer IPM utilizes Trimble’s Applanix POSPac® to process the data and deliver a highly accurate 2-D map or 3-D model, presenting a measurable time and cost savings for the company. In fact, according to Alexander Reiterer, head of department object and shape detection for Fraunhofer IPM: “The speed at which we can generate a 2-D map of an urban area means we can now go from capturing mobile mapping data to planning for fiber optic cable lines within days, rather than weeks or months.” Read more.

Case study 2: New Zealand-based Data Collection Ltd (DCL) specializes in tools for measuring and managing roads. Their premier tool is ROMDAS (Road Measurement Data Acquisition System), affordable surveying equipment used to improve road safety around the world.

ROMDAS equipment utilizes sensors and proprietary software to collect road data outputs at a high speed. The sensors collect accurate, reliable and relevant pavement performance data, as well as the location and condition of defects and assets.

ROMDAS equipment also inspects airport runways and tarmacs for foreign object detection (FOD). Prior to utilizing the ROMDAS system, airports heavily invested in teams of 20 people to visually inspect for debris. ROMDAS needed a mobile mapping solution to geo-tag the location of any FODs for faster and easier removal. To reduce the margin of error, it would require precise positioning to maintain its position on the tarmac, avoiding overlap.

Utilizing Trimble ProPoint™ GNSS technology for highly accurate positioning and Trimble’s Applanix POS LVX for mobile mapping and object geo-referencing, DCL enhanced their capabilities with the ROMDAS LCMS with LFOD (laser foreign object detection). Mounted on a vehicle, it utilizes advanced 3D laser scanning and sub-meter GPS to automatically detect, alert and archive airfield FODs for a live map operator to easily find and retrieve. 

In post-processing, pavement analysis algorithms analyze raw profiles to identify common defects like cracking, potholes and rutting. With the ability to quickly identify both FOD locations and pavement conditions, the system integration is poised to make busy airports safer at a lower cost across the globe. Read more.

DG for infrastructure monitoring and maintenance is advancing, and Trimble is leading the way with products like Trimble’s Applanix PP-RTX™ and LiDAR QC tools. Discover what solutions are waiting to resolve your road surveying, paving management and overall road infrastructure needs here.