Globhe Drones, based in Sweden, provides a subscription model platform for businesses to access data from about 8,000 drone operators in 134 countries. Globhe’s drone data marketplace gathers aerial imagery and generates digital terrain models to assist in creating flood modeling. Users of the platform can order specific drone data missions from the marketplace almost instantly. Drones capture high-resolution data while leaving little to no carbon footprint during the operations.
Globhe CEO, Helena Samsioe, said, “Due to climate change, we see more destructive climate disasters more frequently worldwide. Malawi has suffered from three major floods in the past four years. Data from drones help respond to floods more efficiently but also help limit the destruction in the first place. However, it’s been hard to get ahold of data from drones, and we’re happy to have changed that by unleashing the power of drones through the Globhe marketplace – now making data from drones easily accessible when and where it’s needed.” Globhe’s most recent engagement was with UNICEF Malawi to provide drone services in emergency preparedness and response.
Overall, this platform is effective in preparedness for flood risk and disaster response. This drone data marketplace is an example of how drone technology can cut costs, increase safety, and improve on infrastructure. Data is captured using ground control points (GCPs) by connecting the models produced by the software with known GCPs, which provides a high vertical and horizontal accuracy of around 10 cm. The spatial resolution is much higher than the resolution produced by satellites, which generally produce a 5–30-meter resolution, compared to the 5-centimeter resolution for the certain types of high-resolution maps and 50 centimeters for Digital Surface and Digital Terrain models.
The Globhe platform has found a way to take data collected from drones that can be used to protect flood-prone communities from devasting effects. As evidenced by this example, drones can serve as useful tools for data collection and provide us with information that might otherwise be unavailable.