Last weekend, a couple of OSM volunteers and drone enthusiasts visited Lupang Arenda in Taytay, Rizal. The visit was part of the ongoing collaboration with Barangay Santa Ana in Taytay to use OpenStreetMap as one of their tools for managing community initiatives. The origins of this collaboration has an interesting back story but I won’t talk about it on this post. ;)

The main goal of the visit is to capture images using drones to create an updated aerial imagery of the community to identify individual building/houses. For a densely populated community like Lupang Arenda, it is difficult to get this level of detail using satellite imagery.

The crew. Photo by Erwin Olario.

After a few minutes of mission planning, we split the group into 3 teams. 2 teams deployed drones to capture overhead photos and 1 team installed action cams to the barangay vehicles to collect street-level photos. The drone team flew 5 times covering ~82 hectares or half of the whole community. After the collection, we then processed the drone imagery using OpenDroneMap to create high-resolution orthophoto.

Coverage of captured imagery

Processed orthophoto and building outline from OpenStreetMap based on outdated satellite imagery.

The level of detail we captured are amazing! Aside from the original intent of using this imagery to update the building outline of individual houses, the imagery also reveals key community issues. Here’s a couple I was able to identify with just a quick pan and scan.

Expansion of settlement continues towards the remaining wetlands of Laguna Lake.

New structures under construction.

Abandoned buildings which may require update of the barangay household survey database.

Debris and garbage blocking access to some roads.

Localized flooding due to blocked drainage canals.

These are just a few spots I saw with a quick browse. We are very excited share back the output to the partner community and understand better how they will use the data. Imagery is now available at OpenAerialMap for anyone to use.

We are still not done, we will cover the other half of the community in future visits. Huge thanks to Bunny, Ian, Buboy, Leigh and Rally for volunteering a weekend of their busy schedule to doing this. Also thanks to Erwin, Kath and Marriane for organizing the activity.

Interested in using drone for your community mapping? Join Ian, Bunny and Leigh at the inaugural Pista ng Mapa this August in Dumaguete where they will share about their experience in flying and processing drone imagery.