UAV 3D-Draping System for Sharing Situational Awareness from Aerial Imagery Data

In emergency operations for fire service (e.g., fire, disaster, search and rescue), an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is highly expected to make an outstanding contribution to grasp the situations of disasters or incidents from aerial imagery data. At present, imagery data is generally provided as each photo and video, and then the practitioners understand them based on their land sense and experiences. That is, it depends on the individual ability. In order to make efficient activities from aerial imagery data, a system that anyone can quickly grasp a situation from them is required. The paper proposes a UAV 3D-draping system that readily shares situational awareness from aerial imagery data. The key feature is to enable situational awareness without land sense and experience by draping the imagery data with location information to a 3D Geographic Information System (GIS). It also gives an easy operation to use onsite. Through a demonstration, the paper illustrates that the prototype system can effectively provide a 3D map for sharing situational awareness through imagery data recorded by multiple UAVs.