Tararua District Council gains international reputation for drone use

Ray Borrie, the Tararua District Council's project specialist, with the council's two drones. Photo / Supplied

The Tararua District Council has gained an international reputation as a "smart city" for its innovative use of drones.

And while our district isn't likely to be the first location that comes to mind when talking "smart cities", the council is a leader in its use of drone-captured data.

"The council is very progressive. Their goal is to untie otherwise isolated data and make it available to the entire organisation and, where possible, to the community. They see drones as the ideal vehicle to support all manner of services," Blair Rogers, Master Business Systems' GIS consultant to the council, said.

Rogers has worked for TDC for nearly 19 years and pioneered the development of software to translate the drone images for various uses.

Now employed by Master Business Systems, he continues to work for TDC three days a week.

Along with a wide array of uses locally, drones are used to capture images of slips on our district's network of rural roads and where streams have scoured their banks to threatening roads, allowing transport issues to be resolved faster.

Rogers believes drone imagery and reliable, post-processing software will be most valuable during emergencies and in responding to disasters such as floods or earthquakes.

"The Tararua District Council has to work 24/7," he said.

"If there's a weather event on a weekend, we're expected to respond — we can't wait until Monday morning for an outside service provider to give us the data. With Pix4D, we process on-demand and fast."

The power and potential of these systems for data capture is so high council has created a permanent drone operator position, with Ray Borrie the project specialist.

Rogers believes it won't be long before every engineer in the council district has a drone.

"Within a few years, maybe sooner, these devices will be another tool in the toolbox, as relevant as a telephone or total station," he said.

Peter Wimsett, council's manager of strategy and district development, and Borrie recently returned from the world congress of drones conference in Brisbane which was attended by more than 1000 people.

The pair were able to showcase the wide variety of applications for which TDC was using drones.

"It was clear our council is more advanced than many businesses at the conference," Wimsett said in a report to councillors.

"Our work in developing practical applications for drones is now attracting national and international interest in our work."

The conference gave the TDC pair a chance to talk with representatives from NASA, Mitsubishi and other worldwide leaders in the field.

Council staff have recently used a drone for a fly-over of a slow moving slip on Otanga Rd, east of Dannevirke.

The drone was able to identify gullies or ponding below the slip area which could potentially be drained to slow the rate of earth movement.

"The scope of whatever we are using drones for is amazing and we are only scratching the surface as to how we use them," Chris Chapman, the Tararua Alliance manager, said.

"As far as our council is concerned, drones are a huge asset."

The Tararua District's mayor, Tracey Collis, agreed.

"The use of drones is incredible and they are certainly putting us on the map," she said.

The council's drones are also making historically time consuming and sometimes risky site assessments quicker, safer and more effective and have recently been used for fly-overs of footpaths due for rehabilitation.

The footage has been used to identify defects which might have been missed during initial investigation, as well as enabling before and after comparison once the footpath work is complete.