Aerowest Modernizes Delivery of Aerial Imagery Data with ArcGIS Reality Studio

Delivering high‑resolution aerial imagery is no longer just about accuracy—it is about speed, accessibility, and usability across a growing range of users.

Founded in 1970, Aerowest GmbH is a family-owned aviation company and one of Germany’s premier providers of high-accuracy photogrammetric data. Aerowest has spent decades producing high‑accuracy data for public agencies, municipalities, and commercial customers across Germany and neighboring countries. Built by practitioners and still led by a motivated team of surveying engineers and pilots, the company has long delivered end‑to‑end photogrammetric workflows—from ground control surveys and aerial imaging to processing and delivering application data.

As demand for reality mapping products expanded beyond traditional surveying teams to planners, infrastructure managers, and nontechnical users, Aerowest faced a new challenge: how to scale production and delivery without compromising accuracy or overwhelming customers with complexity.

Hans Joachim Benfer, director of Aerowest, began his career there as a surveying engineer while training as a commercial pilot for aerial imaging.

“We always believed the data should be accurate,” said Benfer, “But in the end, if the data is difficult to access or difficult to use, people stop working with it.”

For years, Aerowest produced highly detailed imagery and maps, but the process was time‑intensive and the audience narrow. Large municipal mapping projects could take years to complete, and finished data was typically delivered to small groups of technical specialists using complex desktop workflows.

As expectations changed, customers began asking for faster turnaround times, more frequent updates, a wider range of reality products from a single flight, and simple, web‑based access for nonexperts.

At the same time, Aerowest was handling increasingly large datasets, capturing imagery at resolutions as fine as two to eight centimeters, and producing multiple terabytes of data each year.
 

Benfer was cautious about introducing new technology that might slow production or compromise accuracy. Past experiences with large datasets in geographic information system (GIS) technology environments had raised concerns about performance, reliability, and scalability.

“We were always afraid that systems would get slower and slower when you work with massive datasets,” Benfer said. “And we cannot afford delays when many clients are waiting.”

Even when production ran smoothly, delivery could still create friction. Customers didn’t just need files—they needed an easy way to view and use reality outputs as intuitive layers in a map, so teams could quickly understand coverage, explore detail, and share results across stakeholders.

Aerowest needed a way to increase processing throughput, expand product offerings, and deliver data more easily without changing its strict quality standards.

Aerowest adopted ArcGIS Reality Studio to modernize how aerial imagery is processed into 2D and 3D reality products—and to better align production with how customers consume that data.

Reality Studio enabled Aerowest to process large imagery collections more efficiently using distributed workflows. They could also generate high‑quality true orthos and 3D meshes at scale, maintain consistent production quality across growing workloads, and expand their range of deliverables from a single flight.

Over time, Aerowest validated Reality Studio’s performance by running it in parallel with other production systems. That side‑by‑side comparison gave the team confidence to transition critical workflows.

“In the beginning, we compared everything,” Benfer explained. “Now we have better true orthos, better 3D meshes, and better support
 

The ability to scale processing was essential. Aerowest implemented a distributed production environment, allowing the team to expand capacity during peak demand while maintaining a stable core production line.

“Sometimes you have tons of data, and all clients call and say, ‘I don’t want to wait—deliver tomorrow,’” said Benfer. “It helps a lot to know that we can scale when we need to.”

At the same time, Aerowest expanded how it delivers results by using ArcGIS Online to publish Reality Studio outputs as layers in a web‑based GIS map view. Instead of relying on complex file delivery, customers can now access, explore, and share reality products directly in a browser.

Equally important, Reality Studio supported Aerowest’s philosophy that intermediate outputs are valuable products. Imagery, point clouds, and 3D meshes could be delivered directly, allowing customers to choose the level of detail and the format that fit their workflows.
 

By modernizing production with ArcGIS Reality Studio, Aerowest significantly improved both internal efficiency and customer outcomes.

Distributed processing reduced delays and bottlenecks, enabling Aerowest to meet tighter delivery timelines, even as dataset sizes grew.

A single aerial capture now supports multiple deliverables, including orthophotos, 3D meshes, point clouds, and vectorized products. “In fact, we get more business from one flight than ever before,” Benfer said.

Reality outputs generated with Reality Studio can be deployed through web‑based applications, making them accessible without specialized desktop software.

“If a client can just open a browser and access the data, they really work with it,” Benfer explained. “You cannot educate everybody to be a GIS expert.”

That usability has enabled entirely new use cases. For example, Aerowest offers a “photogrammetry on demand” service for roof tilers: Customers can select a single building by address and receive a 3D product in less than 48 hours—without managing files or installing software.
 

The improved efficiency and scalability enabled by Reality Studio also supports Aerowest’s expansion into thermal mapping and environmental analysis. Using advanced sensors, the company now delivers thermal datasets to public services and municipalities for tasks such as pipeline monitoring and urban heat‑island analysis—extending the value of reality data across seasons and departments.

As reality mapping becomes a foundational layer for planning, infrastructure, and environmental workflows, Aerowest continues to invest in technologies that balance accuracy, scalability, and accessibility.

By combining rigorous photogrammetry standards with fast, scalable production in ArcGIS Reality Studio—and sharing those outputs through a web‑based experience—Aerowest is enabling more people to access reliable reality products and apply them to real‑world decisions, faster.

For Benfer, the impact of ArcGIS goes beyond faster processing.

“It’s not only about the final product anymore,” he said. “It’s about giving people access to reliable data they can actually use—and use again.”