Learning Promise

When you’re ready to use drones in the outdoors to capture real environmental data, we’re there to help you. We’ll step you through mission planning to ensure you capture reliable image and field survey data and make sure that you know how to process it properly. We will guide you through using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as you and your students learn how to analyse, measure, map, and communicate with the geospatial data you’ve captured.

Learning Outcomes

In this course, you will learn how to guide your students to:

• Understand the workflow required to undertake drone data capture missions;

• Create and execute a flight plan designed for capturing mapping data;

• Design and execute a plan to capture corresponding field survey data;

• Create an orthomosaic and 3D digital surface model of your study site;

• Use a GIS to display, create, and edit spatial data; and

• Communicate information using basic cartographic skills and essential map elements.

Karen explains all of the software requirements, understanding the jargon of the drone mapping world and helping you understand what it is that you want to map, what the output is you want to produce and which drone is best suited to your work.

Prior planning prevents a poor performance, and when you are travelling out to a site to fly your drone, the last thing you want to collect is bad data!

This module takes you through the workflow you need to capture good data and the best apps you need to conduct your drone mapping mission.

You are out in the field, now how to you do you get the best results? This module with help you understand what situations you need to have field survey (i.e. ground truthing your data) and if so, how is this best done with ground control points for accuracy.

Karen will show you a simple way to collect your data for validation. 

Once you have collected your data, it is time to get it ready for processing and creating your orthomosaic and 3D digital surface model.

Karen takes you through the value and need for pre-processing, and which software packages are best for creating orthomosaics with your drone imagery. 

Your data is no good sitting inside your GIS, you need to extract it and provide it back to your client. Karen will teach you how to understand the power of using GIS for presenting and analysing spatial data.

You will be able to confidently incorporate both raster and vector datasets into a GIS project and undertake some basic geoprocessing operations such as georeferencing.

The output will be to produce a map of your drone survey site that includes all of the essential map elements as per cartographic convention. 

Technology can be fun, but also frustrating at times. Karen has over 20 years of GIS experience and six+ years of drone experience. There is an active discussion board in the course for you to ask any questions.

Online PD can be frustrating if you don't have access to live support. So that is what we give you (live support, not the frustration!)

Personal email and phone support is available to help you when you need it. We are never far away from being able to help, with real people!

If you want to get the most benefit from the course in terms of capturing your own data, it is good to have your own drone or one that you can borrow for this purpose. However, you can still undertake the majority of the course using a demonstration dataset. This will give you the skills to map and process your own data at a later stage when you get a drone, and will help you understand what's required in terms of workflow.

Note that this course does NOT teach you how to fly your drone, but how to use it for data capture. We recommend getting your remote pilot license or undertaking other training for flight proficiency.

Not at all. While it is useful to have some level of geography training, we don't assume this knowledge and will be starting from scratch. We do expect a reasonable level of computer literacy.

You need to have a computer with either ArcGIS Pro or QGIS for the mapping component, and your choice of pre-processing software (ArcGIS Pro with Orthomapping; Pix4D; Agisoft Photoscan) installed. Once you purchase the course you will see the different software options and you can make your choice from there. Note that although QGIS is free, the other software options have free trials available for short periods, but after that you must purchase. So if you are using a free trial, make sure that you are ready to start the course as soon as you register for the software.

Same company (ESRI), but no. ArcMap is being phased out and will eventually be replaced by ArcGIS Pro. Our industry colleagues are all moving towards ArcGIS Pro. You can get a 21 day trial license of Pro for free from ESRI.

Video demonstrations will be given in both ArcGIS Pro and QGIS. While the concepts will be similar in other GIS programs, the interface will look different so it may be challenging for you to translate.

This course is 100% online. For face to face options, please email us

Yes and no :-)

While the curriculum is the same, the face to face option will take two full days. Through the online portal you can also take your time and re-visit our learning points, videos, resources, and lesson plans as often as you like. You control when and where you want to do this, as long as you have wifi. 

For a bundled price of both face to face with the online resources, please contact us.

We have tested the materials with people aged 7-70! No kidding :-)

We do not assume any prior knowledge of geospatial mapping techniques, but we do assume that you are competent in flying your drone to capture data for processing. Alternatively you can use our demo dataset.

You can access all of the resources as soon as you purchase the course. 

This course will be open for you to explore, download the resources and access the live support for a period of 12 months from purchase. 

Absolutely! Whenever you like, totally flexible.

The course is self-paced, so this is entirely up to you, but I would suggest a minimum of ten hours. It will depend on your incoming level of expertise and the degree to which you explore all of the resources. For example, I have many optional suggested links and readings that might be of interest to expand your learning, but not necessarily mission critical. 

This course goes far beyond a series of  discrete lessons and is a complete course from understanding workflows through to capturing and processing data and providing information outputs.

The materials have been created and tested by me, Dr Karen Joyce, and I have been teaching remote sensing and GIS for the past 20 years. I have also been teaching in the online environment for ten years, so I know how to create resources that work!

You will also have first hand access to me during our 'ask the expert' chats where you can join our online webinar to delve deeper or broader on any topic you need.

Please contact us directly and we can discuss your training needs. hello@shemaps.com

As long as you have a computer capable of running the required software, you will be able to use trial versions to complete the course. If you want to continue to work with this sort of data you may consider purchasing the required software.

Not at all - feel free to follow along as you like.