Miguel Ortín (Director of Concessions Operations A2-T4, at Ferrovial Services) attended the most prestigious conference on drones in Spain, showing applications for unmanned aircraft in civil engineering, specifically, monitoring the slopes on the A-2 highway, which the team of drone experts at Digital Hub created.
ASM SYSTEM: Aerial Slope Monitoring with Drones (Ferrovial)
CivilDron´19, the most prestigious Conference on Drones in the country, outlined the keys to the future of unmanned aircraft. The conference was organized by the Fundación de la Energía de la Comunidad de Madrid (FENERCOM, the Energy Foundation of the Community of Madrid), and it was held at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales headquarters.
The Autovía de Aragón Sociedad Concesionaria, working with Digital Hub and Ferrovial Corporation’s Innovation Management, has satisfactorily finished developing a pioneering system for monitoring slopes by using drones. This initiative was presented at CivilDron’19 for the Ferrovial Services concessionaire, which manages the Calatayud-Alfajarín (Zaragoza) stretch of the A2 highway. Miguel Ortín, Director of Concessions Operations, presented the initiative during the third session at the conference. As a concessionaire on this part of the highway, Ferrovial is responsible for preserving the original shape of the dirt formations and performing daily and monthly visual inspections, as well as correcting defects in netting, walls, and other relevant elements.
An explanatory video showed how this innovative form of slope inspection is done. High-resolution aerial images are taken, then they are processed to produce the cloud of points linked to the slope, as well as its 3D model. Inspections made at different times are compared to automatically detect any changes and generate a report.
The Digital Hub team and Innovation Management at Ferrovial Services Spain have worked together, each of them bringing their area of know-how, as well as technology, direction for finding the most appropriate provider, etc., leading the concessionaire to be a pioneer in using unmanned aircraft for these sorts of inspections.
The scalability of this solution for the entire length of the rest of the slopes on this part of the highway is currently being analyzed yearly from a financial point of view.
Thanks to this initiative, Ferrovial has managed to reduce workplace hazards and speed up inspections, and they can digitalize all the data obtained with a standardized method.
Digital Hub, Serving Businesses
If you know of other ways we can increase efficiency by using drones, send your ideas to the Digital Hub Drones Department (dhdron@ferrovial.com). We look forward to receiving your messages to continue growing together through innovation.
