Lidar capture / Flood and drainage
Drone lidar for flood and drainage mapping in Alberta
Fresh bare earth terrain at centimetre accuracy, captured under the trees and brush along creeks, for flood studies, stormwater design, culvert sizing and county drainage.
Why it matters
Alberta's Flood Hazard Identification Program is producing new studies across the province, such as one covering 69 km of the Pembina River through Westlock County. These studies, and the stormwater and drainage projects that follow, start with accurate terrain.
Provincial lidar is often years old and coarser than ditch, culvert and lot level design needs. Drone lidar captures the corridor to your project date and specification, including the ground beneath the bush along the banks.
What you get
- Bare earth DEM and contours ready for hydraulic modelling
- Channel and bank geometry and breaklines, combined with field measured culvert inverts
- Overland flow paths and low spot mapping
- Ditch and roadside drainage profiles for counties
- Post flood debris and erosion documentation
- Data in NAD83(CSRS) with CGVD2013 heights
Who uses it
Engineering consultants on flood and stormwater studies, rural municipalities planning drainage work, developers needing pre design topography, and landowners working through drainage disputes.
Capture reference
- Outputs
- DEM, contours, cross sections
- Heights
- CGVD2013
- Best window
- After snowmelt or leaf drop
- Formats
- LAS, GeoTIFF, DXF
- Captured with
- Lidar plus RGB, one flight
- Coverage
- AB base, BC and SK direct
Example scenario
Illustrative, to show the workflowA consulting engineer is designing culvert upgrades for a county road crossing a creek that overtops each spring.
- Three kilometres of creek corridor, 200 m wide, is flown in a single day.
- Vegetation is stripped to bare earth and the channel, banks and road embankment are extracted.
- The engineer adds field measured culvert inverts to the surface.
- The model shows which crossings back up water and how far the flood spreads.
Deliverables in this scenario: Bare earth DEM, 0.25 m contours, cross sections every 25 m, orthomosaic, LAS point cloud.
Have a site like this? Send the location and what your team needs out the other end, and a scoped quote comes back, usually within one business day, with the positioning method and delivery window stated.
Get a quote for this workCommon questions
Answered plainlyIs drone lidar good enough for flood models?
Yes, for corridors and local studies, where it is typically far denser than provincial lidar. Water surfaces return little laser energy, so channel bathymetry still comes from a boat or wading crew.
Why not use free provincial lidar?
It may predate floods, construction or erosion, and its density suits regional work more than detailed design. Drone data is captured to your project date and specification.
When should drainage capture be flown?
Spring after snowmelt, before green up, or fall after leaf drop gives the best ground coverage.
Related lidar work
All lidar work
Farm drainage
A centimetre level map of where water collects, where it flows and where it would leave the property, before you move dirt or lay tile.
Landslide and slope monitoring
Repeat flights from identical flight plans show where a slope moved, by how much and how fast, including under brush on the scarp.