Project Impacts

This project serves as a catalyst for automated animal monitoring with sUAS in airport environments. It provides the USDA and FAA a set of protocols and best practices in utilizing sUAS image collection in relation to altitude, sensors, and overlay preferences for automated monitoring of animals near airport environments. The study also provides best practices in avoiding biases in estimating wildlife numbers and provides airport professionals a web-based image analysis software tool for monitoring wildlife. A major contribution from this study in relation to computer vision research, is a benchmark aerial image dataset of wildlife commonly found in airport environments.