The many benefits panoramic photos bring to your business
Although panoramic photography has been around for a while now, it used to play a less important role in data capture than point cloud. Typically, photo quality was rather low, so its usability was limited to colouring point cloud data.
As 360 capture in mobile mapping systems is improving, panoramic photos gain relevance. Right now, local governments, infrastructure, mining and utilities companies appreciate them for providing complete coverage of a site and detailed information. Let’s take a look how panoramic imagery brings value to urban planning, infrastructure and utilities sectors. Maybe their examples will convince you to incorporate 360 imagery into your workflow as well.
Panoramic photos help municipalities in asset management
Management of assets in public spaces is one of the most important tasks municipalities are responsible for. Panoramic photos make their job significantly easier in this regard. Imagery allows to remotely monitor the condition of assets and saves time otherwise spent outside investigating. Now municipalities know instantly when and where maintenance is needed.
Panoramic photos are a cost-effective and fast way to create an up-to-date database. Street furniture e.g. street lights, billboards, bus stops can all be detected from 360 imagery (either with manual or automatic object detection) and then included in GIS applications.
360 panoramas make infrastructure inspection more effective and safer
Road and railway inspections is another area where panoramic photos are widely used. The main advantage of this solution is that information is gathered only once and there is no need for multiple visits to a site. It limits disruption to traffic and improves safety by decreasing the time spent on a roadside. Inspecting area from a computer allows to identify and then evaluate damage, wear and deformation of roads, cycle paths, paved surfaces.
360 imagery is also used to create an inventory of assets and helps to manage and maintain outdoor objects such as road markings, public lighting, traffic signs. What is more, panoramas can be used to assess the work carried out by contractors.
Benefits for mining and utilities sectors
Apart from already mentioned applications in urban planning and infrastructure, panoramic imagery offers many advantages for the mining industry. It is an important tool for site monitoring and asset tracking. Comparing current photographs with the previous ones brings new value to change detection. Image documentation helps to track and validate the progress.
For utilities companies, timely inspections and detecting faults are often a big challenge. Pipelines and power lines networks are extensive, so panoramic photos are an excellent tool to make inspections easier and cost-effective.
Working with panoramic photos- challenges and problems
Thanks to present 3D data collection methods, monitoring and documenting a project can be done in an accurate and straightforward way. Still, if you want to use e.g. panoramic photos or point clouds in this process, you have to consider aspects such as data accessibility, the amount of data, delivery time and the requirement for special software. Successful handling these issues is the key to effective communication and collaboration.
In response to these issues, Pointscene offers an online platform for managing all kinds of data, point clouds, photographs, 3D vector models and even reports. What are the main benefits? When using Pointscene, all your data are in one place, which makes it easier to use, manage and share them. Pointscene gives you a space to view and analyse sites remotely, and then share real-time information with your co-workers.
What to read next
- If you want to find more information on integrating panoramic images and point clouds, read this text
- Don’t miss the previous text, if you want to know how to create 3D map in QGIS
- For the admin and user perspective on sharing the data through Pointscene, look here
- For information on how to create 3D models with your smartphone check this text
- If you’re interested in indoor navigation, check the text about SLAM
Test Pointscene today
Want to know how to include point clouds in your projects? Visit www.pointscene.com to explore many examples in the gallery or start a free trial and upload your own data within minutes.
