Applications of Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems

Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems can access hazardous or inaccessible areas during disaster events and provide rapid response. This is the first book that brings together the best practices of sUAS applied to a broad range of issues in high spatial resolution mapping projects. The case studies included in this book are sUAS based projects.

Dr. J.B. Sharma is a Professor and Assistant Department Head of Physics at the University of North Georgia. He holds the 'Eminent Scholar of Teaching and Learning' endowed chair since 2009 and has been a faculty member in the University System of Georgia for the past 34 years. He has a B.S in Physics from Jacksonville state University and a M.S. in Physics from the University of Georgia. He has a PhD in Geography from the University of Georgia with a specialization in Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Science. His is very interested in physics and remote sensing literacy issues in education and novel curricular development that promotes these disciplines. He was the CASE/Carnegie Georgia Professor of the Year in 1999. He received the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS) 2015 Leidos-Estes Memorial teaching excellence award and was elected as a Fellow of the American Association of Physics Teachers in 2018. He serves on the Board of Directors of AmericaView which is a national consortium promoting remote sensing education, research and outreach. His research interest are physics and remote sensing education, small Unmanned Aerial Systems (sUAS) applications and Geographic Object Based Image Analysis (GEOBIA).

1. sUAS Data Accuracy in Photogrammetric Workflows. 2. Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and Thematic Map Accuracy Assessment. 3. Multiuser Concepts and Workflow Replicability in sUAS Applications. 4. The sUAS Educational Frontier: Mapping an Educational Pathway for the Future Workforce. 5. Federal Government Applications of UAS Technology. 6. sUAS for Wildlife Conservation - Assessing Habitat Quality of the Endangered Black-Footed Ferret. 7. Multi-View, Deep Learning, and Contextual analysis: Promising Approaches for sUAS Land Cover Classification. 8. UAS for Nature Conservation - Monitoring Invasive Species. 9. Small Unmanned Aerial Systems (sUAS) and Structure from Motion for Identifying, Documenting, and Monitoring Cultural and Natural Resources. 10. New Insights Offered by UAS for River Monitoring. 11. The Campus as a High Spatial Resolution Mapping Laboratory - Small Unmanned Aerial Systems (sUAS) Data Acquisition Analytics, and Educational Issues. 12. Flying UAVs in Constrained Environments: Best Practices for Flying within Complex Forest Canopies.