Protocols for UAS-based observation

In Chapter 1 the terms and the characteristics of an unmanned spatial data collection system were defined along with the fields of application, advantages, and disadvantages of different solutions and sensors. This chapter will present an overview of existing protocols and broad guidelines on environmental unmanned aerial system (UAS)-based monitoring, including study design with the general and possible use of the platform and sensor/camera settings, comprising quality assurance (QA) with all necessary steps (i.e., georeferencing, radiometric calibration for optical and thermal sensors, programming the flight mission, and data processing) to fulfill a complete survey mission for a given environmental application. Although the field of UAS-driven data collection represents a multidisciplinary system of rapidly developing science areas, there are many unifying elements and associations in their application. One of the key objectives of this chapter is to provide UAS users with general practical guidance in optimizing the collection and delivery of high-quality output for subsequent analysis and interpretation. Across diverse UAS applications, a general framework can describe work within five interconnected steps (Fig. 2.1) (Tmusic et al., 2020).