Drone survey for mining & quarrying
Stockpile volumes, pit progression, haul road design and highwall monitoring - measured from the air on a schedule your commercial and safety teams can both live with.
- Stockpiles per flight
- 40+
- Personnel on piles
- Zero
- Volume accuracy
- 1-2%
Context
Monthly reconciliation without sending anyone up a stockpile
The safety argument alone usually carries the decision. Conventional stockpile survey puts a person on an unconsolidated slope with a rover pole, often near active loading. A drone measures the same pile from 60 metres up, in a fraction of the time, with hundreds of thousands of points instead of forty.
The commercial argument follows close behind. Because we lock the control network and the toe polygons on the first visit, the month-to-month numbers become comparable in a way manual survey rarely achieves - which removes the largest single source of unexplained reconciliation variance.
Beyond stockpiles we map pit progression against the mine plan, model bench geometry and haul road grades, monitor highwalls for movement between cycles, and track rehabilitation and dump capacity. It is the same flight; only the analysis differs.
What clients bring us
- Surveyors climbing unstable piles and standing near active highwalls
- Monthly reconciliation variances nobody can explain
- Pit progression and remaining reserve estimated rather than measured
- Slope movement detected only after something has already moved
What we do about it
- Whole-site capture in a single flight day with no personnel exposed to pile or wall hazards
- Locked control and fixed toe polygons so month-on-month variance reflects real movement
- Pit progression, bench geometry and remaining volume measured against the mine plan
- Repeat highwall capture with change detection between cycles
Relevant services
What mining & quarrying clients commission
Listed in the order they usually matter to this sector.
Working in mining & quarrying?
Send us the site, the area and what the data has to support. We respond within one working day - and if the method you asked for will not hit your accuracy target, we will say so before you commit.