Northern BC · Forestry & Resource
Northern BC's forestry and resource hub. Mills, cutblocks, resource road networks and the staging point for remote and fly in work further north.
Industrial Aerial Solutions provides drone LiDAR, photogrammetry, thermal imaging and infrastructure inspection in Prince George and across northern British Columbia. Prince George is the forestry and industrial hub of the north, with sawmills and pulp operations, a large resource road network, rail and highway junctions, and access to remote sites throughout the region. The dominant technical requirement in this region is bare earth terrain data under forest canopy, which multi return LiDAR delivers and photogrammetry cannot. IAS flies a Zenmuse L2 sensor capturing up to five returns per pulse for exactly this work.
01 / The Local Picture
Every region has a reason the work is different here. This is ours.
In northern BC the ground is usually under trees. That single fact decides the technology. Photogrammetry builds a surface from what the camera can see, so under closed canopy it maps the top of the forest and calls it terrain. Road grades designed from that surface are wrong.
Multi return LiDAR sends pulses through canopy gaps and records up to five returns each, so branches, understory and bare ground are separated in the point cloud. The result is a genuine bare earth digital terrain model for road layout, grade design, drainage and harvest planning, plus a canopy height model from the same flight for inventory.
The other northern reality is distance. Sites here are often hours down a resource road. Aerial capture turns a multi day ground survey into a single mobilization, and one flight collects the terrain model, the canopy model and the orthomosaic together rather than as three separate exercises.
02 / Local Applications
Covering Prince George, Vanderhoof, Quesnel, Mackenzie, Fort St James and the resource road networks of the Nechako and upper Fraser.
Forestry
Digital terrain models under second growth and old growth for road layout, grade and drainage design and harvest planning. Canopy height models from the same acquisition support stand inventory and growth monitoring.
Resource Roads
Continuous capture along resource road networks for maintenance prioritization, culvert and crossing inventory, slope condition and deactivation planning, with cross sections extracted at whatever stations the engineer wants.
Mills & Industrial Sites
Log yard and chip pile volumetrics on a repeat cycle, plus 3D as built documentation of mill sites and industrial facilities for expansion planning and facility management.
Remote & Fly In
Prince George is the practical staging point for work further north. Remote and fly in sites are quoted on request, with mobilization and regulatory requirements scoped up front rather than discovered later.
03 / Capabilities
Dense point clouds and bare earth terrain models, including under canopy.
Orthomosaics, digital surface models and true to scale 3D models.
Radiometric heat data for electrical, mechanical and building envelope faults.
Close visual and thermal inspection without a lift, a shutdown or a crew at height.
04 / FAQ
Industrial Aerial Solutions operates from Abbotsford, British Columbia and mobilizes to Prince George for scheduled project work. Travel and mobilization are quoted transparently as part of the project, not hidden in the day rate. For jobs outside the Lower Mainland the quote states the mobilization cost as a separate line.
Aerial photography and video runs $250 to $1,200 per shoot. Everything else is quoted per project, on area, required accuracy, terrain, canopy, travel and deliverable list. NDVI mapping, LiDAR, photogrammetry and thermal inspection are each scoped individually, and municipal and government work is normally contract based.
Yes. Industrial Aerial Solutions holds a Transport Canada Advanced RPAS certificate, the higher of Canada's two certificate levels, and is qualified for controlled and restricted airspace operations including obtaining Special Flight Operations Certificates where a site requires one.
No. IAS supplies centimetre level geospatial data products for decision support. IAS is not a licensed BC Land Surveyor and does not perform legal surveys or boundary determinations. The two work together: IAS collects dense aerial data quickly over large areas, and your surveyor or engineer reviews, marks up and certifies it.
Ready When You Are
Send the site location, the timeline and what you need measured. You get a scoped quote back with the mobilization cost stated plainly.
100% Indigenous owned · Based in Abbotsford, British Columbia · Transport Canada Advanced RPAS Certified
