Performance Evaluation of Low-Cost Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Surveying and Mapping of Buildings in Local Government Organization Application: A Case Study of Mae Ka Subdistrict Municipality

Abstract

This research aims to evaluate the efficiency of low-cost unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for surveying building and infrastructure data for the local government's organizational applications. The survey and mapping utilize low-cost UAVs for aerial photography in the densely built-up area around University of Phayao. The selected UAVs for this survey are DJI Phantom 4 Pro V2 and are set to fly at an altitude of 90 meters with 80% and 60% overlap for forward and side overlap, respectively. The image resolution is set at 2.45 centimeters per pixel. The acquired aerial images are then processed to generate point cloud data, orthophotos, and numerical elevation models. The image processing involves adjusting parameters for image alignment, creating 3D points at high and medium levels, and extracting building information to measure the area sizes at different scales, including 1:100, 1:250, and 1:500. After obtaining building and infrastructure data, an accuracy assessment is conducted by comparing it with the field survey data collected for the local municipality's tax map system. The results show that the orthophotos generated from low-cost UAV surveys closely match the surveyed data in terms of building and infrastructure sizes. The most accurate scales are found to be 1:250, 1:100, and 1:500, respectively. This study concludes that low-cost UAVs can effectively support traditional survey methods for building and infrastructure data collection.