Mining Exploration with UAV, Low-Cost Thermal Cameras and GIS Tools—Application to the Specific Case of the Complex Sulfides Hosted in Carbonates of Udías (Cantabria, Spain)

Abstract

The depletion of natural resources implies the need for a constant search for new reserves to satisfy demand. In the mining sector, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have revolutionised geo-information capture and modelling to allow the use of low-cost sensors for prospecting and exploration for potentially exploitable resources. A very powerful alternative for managing the huge volume of data is the Geographic Information System (GIS), which allows storage, visualisation, analysis, processing and map creation. The research in this paper validates a new quasi-automatic identification of mining resources using GIS thermal-image analysis obtained from UAVs and low-cost sensors. It was tested in a case that differentiated limestone from dolostone with varying iron content, and different thermal behaviour from solar radiation, thereby ensuring that the thermal image recorded these differences. The objective is to discriminate differences in an image in a quasi-automatic way using GIS tools and ultimately to determine outcrops that could contain mineralisation. The comparison between the proposed method with traditional precision alternatives offered differences of only 4.57%, a very small deviation at this early stage of exploration. Hence, it can be considered very suitable.

Advancements and Applications of Drone-Integrated Geographic Information System Technology—A Review

“…These maps can be used in urban planning, land-use management, and environmental monitoring [10]. Surveyors can also use drones to capture topographic data and produce digital elevation models (DEMs) that are useful in various fields such as civil engineering and mining [11,12]. Another important application of GIS-integrated drone technology is disaster management and emergency response assistance [8].…”

4D Models Generated with UAV Photogrammetry for Landfill Monitoring Thermal Control of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) Landfills

“…The miniaturization of sensors has enabled UAVs to carry thermographic sensors [31] to capture thermal images (TIR) that determine the temperature of the imaged surface. The combination of UAV images and photogrammetry enables the representation of temperature distributions in thermal heat maps, thermal orthomosaics [32], and thermal 3D models [33] from the reconstruction of the scene based on two-dimensional images [34]. The combination of UAV thermal images and photogrammetry has been used for the identification of hot spots associated with different risk factors such as LGF emissions [1,22] and landfill fires [10,35] based on 2D orthoimages.…”