DroneDeploy Reveals Commercial Drone Industry Trends

Data represents two million acres mapped across 100 countries

It seems like just yesterday that we announced DroneDeploy users had mapped 1 million acres — a milestone that took 12 months to reach. Today, less than four months later, we’re thrilled to announce our users have hit another major milestone: 2 million acres (over 809 thousand hectares) across 100 countries!

DroneDeploy users are now mapping over 50% of the world’s countries across a wide array of industries, enabling us to see broad trends in the commercial drone space — trends that have largely been a matter of speculation and anecdote until now. In celebration of our latest milestone, we created an infographic (see below) to share industry insights based on DroneDeploy usage data.

Confirming Prevailing Theories, with a Few Surprises

Many of the trends conform to conventional wisdom. For example, agricultural users do tend to map larger areas at lower resolutions, as expected. In contrast, construction users map significantly smaller areas with a higher density of images, often optimizing for 3D modeling.

Not all the insights were anticipated. A big surprise was the sheer size of the largest maps, including a 4,371 acre map (equivalent to 3,500 football fields), captured by a DJI Phantom 3. Even more surprising is that most of the largest maps were made by quadcopters, not fixed wings. [Click to tweet]

Thank you to the worldwide DroneDeploy community for the privilege of flying and mapping with you.

— Mike Winn, CEO

Want to learn how DroneDeploy can help your business? Visit www.dronedeploy.com or start your free trial today.

View the infographic in a new browser tab to access links to interactive maps and video. To learn more about the trends shown in the infographic, check out our post, A Closer Look at Commercial Drone Industry Trends.

View and download the full infographic.