GIS-related FAA drone exemptions represent 16% of first 2000 issued

The FAA has yet to issue guidelines under which commercial drones or UAVs can operate, but that doesn’t mean you can’t legally conduct commercial drone flight operations. Exceptions are being granted for those companies or individuals that file a petition for exemption under the FAA’s Section 333. 

Per the FAA’s website: “As of March 23, 2015, the FAA will automatically grant a "blanket" COA (Certificate of Authorization)for flights at or below 200 feet to any UAS operator with a Section 333 exemption, provided the aircraft weighs less than 55 pounds, operations are conducted during daytime Visual Flight Rules (VFR) conditions within visual-line-of-sight (VLOS) of the pilot, and certain distances away from airports or heliports. Details are available here.” A list of companies that have applied for and been granted Section 333 exceptions is available on the FAA’s website.

As of November 16, 2015, we conducted an informal analysis of the first 2000 granted exemptions. Our goal was to understand how strong the demand is for a UAV data-gathering tool in general, and for GIS and geospatial applications in particular, as well to understand how the demand varies across the country.

We began by defining the following categories:

• Photography — including filming, motion picture, cinematography, videography, television, aerial imaging and thermography.
• GIS & Geospatial — including survey, mapping, mining, remote sensing, orthomosaics, photogrammetry and landscape.
• Inspections — including construction, power line, pipe line, railroads and other utilities.
• Real Estate — all types.
• Agriculture, including precision, crop scouting, crop insurance and other agriculture.
• Insurance — including crop insurance and damage assessment. 
• Search and Rescue.

It is important to note that the study was not strictly scientific; the accuracy of the results may have been affected by several factors:

1. The missions or applications listed in the Section 333 exemption application may not be the only ones that a company will ultimately perform, and
2. Some companies listed multiple missions. As an example, Utility Aerial Service in McLean, VA listed their mission as utility inspections, but Parametrix of Seattle, WA listed their missions as aerial photography, videography, surveying, photogrammetry and inspections. For the purpose of representation, we added one mission to the Inspection category in the case of Aerial Service, but for Parametrix, we added one mission for Photography (photography and videography), one for GIS (surveying and photogrammetry) and one for Inspections.
3. There are also the issues of defining categories and interpreting the correct category from mission descriptions. 

Exemptions Granted by State

For the most part, exemptions granted by the FAA roughly tracked state population, but there were exceptions. For instance, despite having half the population of California, Florida had the highest number of granted exemptions. Virginia ranks twelfth by population but fourth by number of exemptions.

Below are the ten states with the greatest number of exemptions: 

The cluster map below illustrates the number of companies granted exemptions in each state.

Application by Industry Segment

Our research indicates that over 30 percent of the exemptions issued are for photography — no surprise there. But perhaps more interesting is that the GIS & Geospatial category ranked number two, at 16 percent. If we include agriculture to the GIS mix, it boosts the category to over 21 percent.  

Industry Categories by Percentage and Count

GIS and Geospatial Exemptions Granted by State

We then filtered the GIS & Geospatial data by state, as shown in the table below.

The cluster and point maps below illustrate location groupings and points for the exemptions granted for GIS & Geospatial applications across the country. 

Drone Manufacturers

Companies filing for exemptions were required to list the drone models and manufacturers they planned to use for commercial work. The table and pie chart below ranks the top 15 UAV companies being used. The actual count far exceeds the total number of UAV manufacturers because many companies listed more than one drone manufacturer and, in some cases, more than one model from the same UAV manufacturer. As an example, uMap of Denver indicated they were going to use the DJI Phantom 3, DJI S1000+, senseFly eBee, and senseFly eBee RTK. This conflated into two counts for DJI and two for senseFly. 

The table and pie chart below show the top 15 manufacturers of the drones being used for GIS & Geospatial applications. 

Summary

After analyzing over 2000 records of Section 333 exemptions granted by the FAA, the research shows that over 16 percent of all granted exemptions were GIS or geospatial related, and that number increases to over 20 percent when agricultural applications are added. The dominant UAV company, regardless of application, was DJI. 3D Robotics was second.

Based on this research, it would certainly seem that inexpensive UAVs will disrupt the GIS & Geospatial industry. It’s a game-changer that is not only rippling through the hardware segment — light weight cameras and other sensing devices — but is also driving down software costs.

In the coming months we'll take a closer look at the different GIS categories to determine which specific segments are, or will be, positively affected by commercial drone flights. We’ll also examine the types of UAVs, fixed wing or copter, being used for GIS applications.

Additional Note: Starting next Monday, December 21st, the FAA (https://www.faa.gov/uas/registration/faqs/) is requiring all UASs weighting less than 55 pounds and more than .55 pounds to be registered.    Owners of drones purchased prior to December 21, 2015 will have 60 days to register.