Review of Indiana Unmanned Aerial System Crash Scene Mapping Program

Crash scene mapping is an important activity performed by law enforcement at fatal and serious bodily injury crashes. In 2019, the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute initiated a program with Purdue University to develop training and centralized image processing of Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) missions. During this period, the center conducted 77 training sessions for 2773 participants, at 24 locations, for 64 agencies. Public safety personnel that have participated in this training have submitted 732 scenes, through June 30, 2025. The number of UAS images submitted by an agency for a scene varies somewhat based upon scene size and agency practices, but the median number of images submitted was 177 and the median duration of flight missions was 11 minutes. The orthomosaic images produced by the mapping center had a median ground sampling distance of 0.1 cm (0.039 in) and a scale measurement error of 2.13 cm (0.83 in). Not surprising, as agencies became more experienced in UAS image acquisition, the mapping accuracy improved. Agencies that routinely submitted more than 5 scenes per year had scenes with even better scale measurement errors, with 95% of the scenes having scale measurement errors less than 1.16 cm (0.45 in). The training courses and centralized processing of the center provided a mechanism for agile feedback to agencies on opportunities to improve their field procedures and was particularly valuable to smaller public safety agencies that did not have resources for processing UAS images.