
On one of the first flights we did, we were just trying to give context to the 2D plans,” said Burton. “[With drone data] we were able to overlay 3D mesh, grading plans, and parcels.”
case study
The Greater Salt Lake area in Utah includes several unincorporated areas, historically called “townships,” that have recently become cities or towns. These new cities and towns of Brighton, Kearns, Magna, Copperton, Emigration Canyon, and White City are all member communities of the Greater Salt Lake Municipal Services District (MSD). MSD provides municipal services to these communities and surrounding unincorporated areas, including administration, planning and development, engineering, and contracted public works operations.
Before the establishment of MSD in 2019, the 86,000 residents in these areas sought greater involvement in shaping their communities. As members of MSD, the mayors of each city and town serve on the Board of Directors, ensuring their residents benefit from being part of this Special Services District. Through MSD, member communities and unincorporated areas in Salt Lake County gain access to essential services such as short- and long-term planning, business licensing, building inspections, permit processing, plan reviews, economic development initiatives, IT support, and geographic information system (GIS) services.
With a small staff and diverse duties throughout the seven jurisdictions, the IT/GIS department at MSD began implementing a GIS environment using ArcGIS Enterprise on Google Cloud to host their authoritative information, including addressing, centerline, and zoning data. With ongoing support from their enterprise architect, Michael Duncan, the small GIS team looked to stay ahead of the curve and fulfill its mission of providing innovative, cost-effective solutions. “We wanted to see what was possible in terms of bringing plans to life and providing better context for our planners,” said James Burton, senior GIS analyst for MSD.
Imagery data releases from local, state, or federal agencies are often infrequent, and procuring high-quality imagery from third-party providers can be costly, slowing down decision-making processes. Early on in their program, MSD needed more than outdated, low-resolution 2D images collected through a fragmented approach.
To accommodate the organization’s growing needs, MSD started a drone program. “I had been keeping an eye on drones for several years, and seeing their growth in the geospatial industry has been awesome,” continued Burton. “It was an easy answer when my manager asked what new project I wanted to work on; I wanted to get my license and start a drone program.”
Burton and Marie Schleicher, another GIS analyst for MSD, obtained their Part 107 drone licenses and equipment. They then developed standard operating procedures and workflows to ensure safe operations. While also attending various training courses, they collaborated with other local agencies with established programs to gain insight and advice from professional drone pilots. Once Burton and Schleicher began flying weekly to collect imagery, they realized there were more efficient ways to gather and analyze spatial data for many of the services they provide.
Training and testing flight missions quickly evolved into established workflows, enabling the immediate collection and analysis of high-resolution images and 3D meshes used to create 3D models. By using Esri’s ArcGIS Drone2Map—drone desktop software that is part of the ArcGIS Reality suite of products—MSD successfully brought 2D documents to life to support their constituents.
To develop more examples of how to use drone imagery, Burton and Schleicher flew a grading project for stormwater management to establish baseline conditions for the inspector. “On one of the first flights we did, we were just trying to give context to the 2D plans,” said Burton. “[With drone data] we were able to overlay 3D mesh, grading plans, and parcels.”
The repeat flights of the same site were a great way to conduct quality control, refine their drone process using a preflight checklist, and test their systems to find solutions to specific problems in the field. “The grading inspectors were a great customer to do repeatable work with because we were able to fly a large development 11 times over seven months,” Burton explained.
Drones offer unique advantages on their own, enabling cost-effective and rapid land surveying compared to traditional methods of collecting aerial imagery using airplanes and helicopters. But coupled with GIS, drones are an even more powerful tool for gathering and organizing data efficiently, facilitating more informed decision-making.
In one recent example, MSD assisted a planner who needed to gather public opinion about the installation of a cell phone tower in a mountain community. After obtaining the building information model (BIM), Burton built an interactive template using ArcGIS Experience Builder, a no-code customizable solution to create web applications. The application allowed Burton to quickly publish drone data to an ArcGIS portal where both 3D scenes and 2D maps could be hosted together.
“We used the line-of-sight analysis and the shadow analysis tools within Experience Builder to go to public engagement meetings and show residents how the tower would impact the area,” said Schleicher. Because staff were able to share drone data with the public quickly, they received near-instant feedback about camouflaging the tower as a stealth tower to look like a tree.
With a free trial from Esri, MSD integrated Site Scan for ArcGIS, a cloud-based drone mapping software that is part of the ArcGIS Reality suite of products. Using Site Scan’s photogrammetry tools for creating orthomosaics, 3D meshes, and digital elevation models, MSD’s drone staff could process multiple missions simultaneously. After the trial, MSD switched from Drone2Map to Site Scan, noting its significantly efficient data management and reduced demand on hardware resources.
In another instance, after the Salt Lake Valley experienced its first major earthquake since the county’s founding, leaders and nearly 30,000 residents in the city of Magna had to rebuild. Many historic structures were damaged in the 5.7 magnitude earthquake. Before the earthquake, city planners were writing a long-range redevelopment plan that had 2D map information in it. One of the MSD long-range planners asked GIS staff about the tools they had available to combine 3D models with drone imagery to enable residents to visualize future revitalization scenarios. So, long-range planners worked alongside GIS staff to capture drone imagery of the buildings to incorporate into a 3D website draft of Magna City’s historic district area plan.
Collaborating with Burton and Schleicher, planners incorporated a drone mesh into several 3D scenes with ArcGIS Urban scenarios, including housing density, job growth potential, and parking spaces. They embedded the scenes into an Experience Builder website to serve as a presentation tool so residents have a realistic view of what the built-out plans might look like.
Burton and his team are seeing multiplying returns on their investment in GIS-powered drone data collection. “This modern technology enhances what’s possible for our planners, and the Magna Historic District website is essentially a presentation tool to get buy-in on new developments that will have a big impact on the community,” continued Burton. “Without the drone mesh to provide those existing conditions for us and combine all those things together, this website wouldn’t exist.”
“The MSD drone program has been a great resource for the long-range planning team. Utilizing their resources and skill sets, we have been able to create 3D renderings of key plan areas . . . Having access to drone capabilities has extended our capacity to serve communities within the MSD jurisdiction and provide detail and justification that we would not otherwise have been capable of offering,” said Matthew Starley, MSD long-range planner.
Another website MSD created with Experience Builder was for Sky Ranch, a housing development within their jurisdiction. MSD built a 3D model of the development as well as an online app to view it. “We were able to capture the site with all the different things going on—finished buildings, unfinished buildings, basements, and dugout grading work being done,” said Burton.“ This gave us an opportunity to get the correct projections for our elevation values and see everything at once.”
Additionally, MSD now supports government marketing and communications teams to produce drone images of towns, cities, and their local events. “This collaborative approach circumnavigates copyright issues because we collect our own media and have more creative freedom to collect the images we need,” said Schleicher.
In one example, MSD took images of a street where a mural was being planned, then superimposed the artwork onto it. “We use that imagery to our advantage, to predict what things might look like and gather community feedback before these processes take place,” continued Schleicher.
Residents also use MSD’s drone services to conduct property evaluations, as well as roof and gutter inspections. “We provide competitive pricing and a cost-effective solution, enabling residents to access detailed property information in ways that were previously unavailable before the introduction of our drone program,” said Schleicher.
For one constituent, MSD staff was able to access an area containing numerous foothills and canyons with a drone and evaluate the property to determine if it could be developed. The development process can be lengthy and cost-prohibitive for residents as they need to seek special permits from the planning commission. “Our services were an alternative to the property owner paying for an extensive [land] survey, which they might not have been able to carry out because of the difficulty to navigate the terrain,” explained Schleicher.
MSD is a relatively new government body but has already seen a big impact with its GIS-powered drone program. With more than 70 missions, 164 flights, and 2,024 minutes complete, staff in other county government departments are realizing they could benefit from drone data in their workflows, too. “It’s cool to be a young, growing organization,” said Burton, who hopes to educate more teams within the government in the future. “We see opportunities to enhance services and allow our planners to do better work. Soon, we’re going to have the engineering department under our roof, so that is the biggest thing I’m looking towards—how are we going to incorporate the AEC, BIM [data], [and] integrate with AutoCAD, to support those engineering [teams] a little more?”
The already successful drone program with the integral implementation of modern enterprise GIS has modernized planning processes. But the technology has also set the stage for even more advancements in asset management, lidar information, and utility support in Salt Lake County.
On one of the first flights we did, we were just trying to give context to the 2D plans,” said Burton. “[With drone data] we were able to overlay 3D mesh, grading plans, and parcels.”
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