How Asset Managers Can Reap the Benefits of Mobile Mapping

geospatial mapping

Mobile Mapping enables you to rapidly collect enormous amounts of highly accurate, geo-referenced spatial data, making it appealing to those in asset management. Historically, this technology has mainly been leveraged for multi-million dollar DOT projects; however, that is changing, and surveyors and municipalities of all sizes are beginning to adopt this tech.

Given his experience in GIS field work, we spoke with Chris Breedlove from our Mobile Mapping Division about his thoughts on the technology, why it’s not just for highway work anymore, and how Duncan-Parnell’s new mobile mapping rental program makes it easy for everyday asset managers to reap its benefits.

What is Mobile Mapping?

Mobile mapping refers to any geospatial data collection from a moving vehicle or platform. This includes mounting a panoramic camera or LiDAR scanner – or both – onto an automobile operating at highway speeds, a train, or even a boat.

What is Groundbreaking About Trimble’s Mobile Mapping Equipment?

Trimble’s MX series is vehicle-mounted hardware and includes the MX50 and MX9. Some highlights of this tech include:

The best IMU in the industry – Applanix’s AP60 is standard on the MX9 and an option on the MX50
System weight and components that yield simple, quick, and easy installation, especially compared to the other high-end systems on the market
All Trimble MX mobile mapping units share a common software workflow

What Are Some Ways You’ve Seen Mobile Mapping Used?

Perhaps the most impressive aspect is just how versatile and far-reaching the possible use cases are for this technology. One project that stands out was driving the MX9 to capture an entire city block in under 1 hour (including set-up time); static scanning for this project took 10 days in the field! I then used a GeoSLAM Zeb Horizon handheld scanner to fill in any missing data, and we still didn’t come anywhere close to the time spent in the field before.

Some of the other use cases I’ve encountered include:

Panoramic image-only collection utilizing the MX series for tens of thousands of miles of state-maintained roadways for automatic crack detection in a third-party AI program.
Image capture is used to populate a GIS system of record, whether that be a municipality’s road network, a railroad’s network, or a pre-event for damage assessment purposes for comparison against a post-disaster capture.

Who Could Use Mobile Mapping?

Truly anyone who needs to document large-scale sites quickly and authoritatively would benefit from Trimble’s MX series gear. Traditionally, mobile scanning is leveraged on highways and other major road projects to generate engineering-quality road surfaces, but this tech can be used in so many other ways, such as for GIS asset collection, both large and small scale.

What’s the Learning Curve Like?

If you’re coming from a GIS perspective like I was, there are many new concepts to learn, but it is certainly doable. Surveyors and engineers, especially those used to terrestrial scanning and processing point clouds already, just have to get comfortable with trajectory processing. Anyone who is currently doing terrestrial scanning with Trimble scanners and processing the data in Trimble Business Center (TBC) should have a rather short learning curve.

The setup and operation of the systems for data capture is rather simple. Certainly, sound project planning is key, as with any project, particularly as far as setting enough ground control points to satisfy your project’s accuracy requirements.

What Do You Like About Duncan-Parnell’s New Mobile Mapping Rental Program?

Our rental program reduces the financial barrier to entry. It allows firms who might not be taking on massive DOT projects to still benefit from the tech on more granular projects. It also allows organizations that only need to capture data in short bursts, say for quarterly or annual reinspection, to spread out their hardware costs.

We offer two rental pathways for Trimble MX series gear, giving organizations the flexibility to choose the program that best fits their needs, experience, and timeline. We’ll ensure you have everything you need to be successful, from hardware, software, and accessories, to training so your team can get the most out of your rental.

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