Inchkeith Island
Inchkeith Island
Our brief was to survey an entire, remote island in the Firth of Forth with additional surveys of underground WW2 buildings, over 8 days of planned drone flights.
The island has no facilities, with no power for battery charging, no fresh water, no transport or formal shelter. A boat dropped the team onto the island at 07:00 and collected them at 15:00.
The team collected 400GB of 4K video and 7,000 high resolution still images from Inchkeith. This huge dataset formed the foundation of months of processing work, moving methodically through the different groups of structures to produce the 3D models and video.
One of the 3D models can be viewed below.




The aerial mapping data was processed to produce 3D assets of the island terrain. These assets were then developed into topographic information, providing contour maps, terrain models and some stunning orthophotography.
Using the Elios 2 for structure modelling at this level of complexity and detail was, as far as we were aware, unheard of at the time and presented several challenges that had to be met in data gathering, management and processing.
With a final data tally of 650GB of data, this was the largest project we had worked on to date, and one of which we remain enormously proud.
Client: | GBA Consulting |
Location: | 57 acre island in the Firth of Forth, Edinburgh, Scotland |
Tech used: | DJI Matrice 210 V2 with a Zenmuse X7 sensor, DJI Phantom 4 RTK and Flyability Elios 2 Drone |
Deliverables: | 3D model, topographic survey, orthomosaic, promotional video, inspection imagery |
Keywords: | #historicbuildings #scale #remote #confinedspaces |