Why a drone beats walking the pile
A single flight captures the whole surface of a stockpile, a quarry face or an excavation. Nobody has to climb unstable slopes, and the result is not built from a few selected profiles but from millions of measured points.
How the volume is calculated
The survey produces a surface model. Volume is the space between that surface and a reference base, which is defined from the surrounding ground or from an earlier survey of the same site.
- Base surface: the reference that every value is measured against
- Fill and cut: material above and below the base, reported separately
- Tolerance: the uncertainty stated next to every volume
Getting numbers you can repeat
A volume is only useful for comparison if every survey uses the same coordinate system, the same base and the same method. Wet ground, vegetation and loose edges can shift a result, so we record the conditions of every flight.
Compare surveys with each other, not with an estimate by eye.
What you receive
Typically a volume statement in PDF or XLSX, contour lines in DXF and an orthophoto of the site. Processing usually takes one to three days, depending on the size of the area.