What is a Topographic Map?

A topographic map is a detailed and accurate illustration of man-made and natural features on the ground such as roads, railways, power transmission lines, contours, elevations, rivers, lakes and rocks. The topographic map is a two-dimensional representation of the Earth’s three-dimensional landscape.

Why do you need a Topographical Map?

Topographic maps represent the Earth’s features accurately and to scale on a two dimensional surface. Topographic maps are an excellent planning tool to asses a site before construction making you aware of any elevation variations you are dealing with. Further, it allows you asses any water run off or drainage issues. Once the project is done it can provide an excellent as built model to ensure all grading was done to design.

How do we ensure our maps properly represent real world elevations?

To ensure accurate contour lines are presented you need to ensure ground points are measured. To do this we use cutting edge Drone LiDAR payloads to penetrate ground vegetation, bushes and tress. This data is essential in ensuring contour lines match the real world. We combine this LiDAR data with photogrammetry data to produce a true representation of your site.

How do we ensure our maps are both absolute and relatively accurate?

To start we would walk the site and place ground control points which are geo-referenced to the correct location in the world. This provides absolute accuracy for the data collected. We then use enterprise level drones that are equipped with RTK (real-time kinematics) broadcast from a base station over one of these known points (GCPs). This provides the relative accuracy of all the data collected.