Mapping Cemeteries in the Czech Republic Using UAS
The largest Czech unmanned aerial systems (UAS) company, UPVISION, in cooperation with Brno City Hall, conducted an innovative project to map adjacent cemeteries and integrate the results into a geographic information system (GIS) used by municipal cemetery administrators.
The project focused on acquiring ultra-high-resolution aerial imagery and transforming it into usable spatial data. Unmanned aerial vehicles were deployed to produce detailed orthophotos, followed by the semi-automated vectorization of individual grave sites. Raster data in the form of orthophotos could also be directly linked to vector layers.
According to Jakub Karas, UAS manager at UPVISION, mapping operations were scheduled outside the growing season. During this period, trees no longer obstruct graves or ground control points such as known reference markers and pathway corners, significantly improving positional accuracy.
Each cemetery was typically captured in a single UAV flight. For smaller cemeteries, a hexacopter was used, achieving an image resolution of 1 cm per pixel with 80/60 overlap. These missions were completed in approximately 10 minutes.
Larger cemeteries—such as the Central Brno Cemetery, which contains more than 80,000 graves—required a fixed-wing UAS. In these cases, imagery was captured at 2 cm per pixel resolution with 85/65 overlap, and the full flight was completed within 40 minutes, despite the larger area and more complex terrain.
The resulting orthophotos were generated in the Czech national coordinate system and served as the basis for precise grave delineation. In parallel, oblique aerial imagery was collected, allowing analysts to visually inspect, describe, and quantify graves more effectively.
The final outcome of the project was the creation of a comprehensive spatial database that includes:
- High-resolution orthophoto maps
- A vector layer defining the exact boundaries of every grave
- Attribute data such as grave numbers
- Linked photographic records for each burial plot
This integrated dataset is now being used to populate and enhance the existing municipal cemetery database, providing city administrators with a powerful tool for long-term management, planning, and record maintenance.
