Kuwait Drone Capture Project

Creating high-definition imagery for the State of Kuwait using drones

Maher Abdel Karim

October 16, 2022

01 / 08

The state of Kuwait is currently covered by commercial satellite imagery providers like Maxar and Airbus. Current image resolution varies between 0.5 - 0.3 meters. All available imagery is suffering from artifacts like missed color balancing, edge matching, different capturing angles, and mixed seasonality. The Public Authority for Civil Information (PACI) decided to start a country-wide project to create a comprehensive imagery basemap using drone imagery. The project is executed via PACI resources to support government GIS services offered to the community.

Project Planning

The drone capturing project was divided into several phases, these phases are divided according to the level of urbanization of the neighborhoods.

Project Phases

The execution of the project was designed to be on a multi-phase approach, neighborhoods of Kuwait were grouped according to priority. The first phase will be covering the capital and the neighborhoods with high-rise buildings.

Total areas to be captured per governorate

Drone Hardware Selection

PACI has initiated drone hardware evaluation according to multiple criteria, these criteria considered the operational conditions in the state of Kuwait. Selection criteria include:

Temperature resistance, as Kuwait normally has more than 50 celsius during the day.
Flight time, trying to find the drone with the most extended flight endurance.
Drone safety measures, as the drone is intended to fly over residential areas, safety is a very important factor.
Operation efficiency, trying to find the drone with the least needed hardware and resources to operate.
Others

Finding the right drone

PACI has selected two drones to use and operate, the selected drone were Trinity F90+ and WingtraOne drone A good drone comparison can be found in the following link .

Capacity Building

PACI has started a capacity-building exercise to train the staff on operating the drone and processing the captured imagery, the training was conducted in several areas to familiarize the staff with the different operation conditions.

Project Status

The capturing and data processing has started targeting phase one areas, the project is aligned with the planned schedule and it is estimated that phases 1 & 2 will end within the coming 6 months.

Capturing process is currently ongoing targeting neighborhoods in phase 1. due to temperature and wind operational conditions, the project is still not running up to the maximum efficiency, even though it is aligned with the planned speed.

Results

The output of the processed images from drone capture shows the expected benefits of the project when comparing the outputs with the available imagery in Google or ArcGIS online imagery basemaps.