Case study / Alberta / Mapping
Georeferenced cemetery mapping across seven sites
Seven cemeteries mapped over two seasons for a single plot management provider, from a heritage site in British Columbia to remote Coal Branch grounds with no network coverage at all.
The challenge
Cemetery records are frequently paper based, incomplete, and tied to plot positions that were never accurately measured. Reconciling a register against the ground is slow work, and errors carry a real human cost.
The site
Seven sites over two seasons, five in 2025 and two in 2026: Fort Steele in British Columbia, Edson, Evansburg, Empyrean, Robb Coal Branch, Mercoal and Mountain Park. Grounds range from maintained municipal cemeteries to historic Coal Branch sites held under mature tree cover, each captured at a resolution where individual plots and markers are legible in the imagery.
Equipment and method
RTK photogrammetry across the full property, processed into a georeferenced orthomosaic accurate enough for plot boundaries to be digitised against the imagery rather than estimated from a paper plan. Under canopy the aircraft is flown low enough for markers to stay legible beneath the tree cover, which is a different capture plan from open ground. On the Coal Branch sites there is no mobile network, so corrections came from a base station set on site rather than from a correction network, and the positions hold to the same standard either way. At Fort Steele the aircraft was also used handheld at ground level to tie coordinates to individual headstones, giving the client a measured position for each marker rather than one digitised from above.
Airspace and safety
Local airspace, with flights scheduled around services and visitor activity. A cemetery is not a job site. If someone is at a graveside the launch waits or the flight moves to another part of the grounds and comes back, a service means the day is rescheduled, and nobody is flown over. The imagery is of the grounds and the markers.
Deliverables
High resolution GeoTIFF orthomosaic in a coordinate system suited to the client's software, supporting burial location plotting and record integration.
Result
A georeferenced base map at every site that the grounds administrator can plot burial locations against and reconcile with the existing register, replacing an approximate paper record with a measurable one. Because the same client engaged us across all seven, each site arrives in the same form and drops into the same system, whether the grounds sit in town or an hour down a forestry road.
Project statistics
- Sites mapped
- 7, across 2025 and 2026
- Method
- RTK photogrammetry
- Corrections
- On site base where no network
- Marker positions
- Tied at ground level, Fort Steele
- Format
- GeoTIFF, georeferenced
- Use
- Burial record integration
- Resolution
- Individual markers legible
- Scheduling
- Around services
Named references are provided during scoping, so you can speak directly to a client who has run this kind of work.