In 2012, the Eiffage-Énergie / BSF Swissphoto bidding consortium won  the tender by the French RTE (Réseau de transport d'électricité) to  carry out an aerial survey over parts of the French high-voltage power  line network. This would encompass roughly 2000km of 63kV – 400kV power  lines over a corridor width of 70 to 120m.

For this mission an  airborne lidar system and a digital medium format camera were  simultaneously operated from a helicopter. The acquired data has a point  density of more than 20 Pts/m2 while the resolution of the images lies  around <10 cm.

The final products are a classified point  cloud, a digital terrain- and surface model (DTM/DSM) and a digital  orthophoto (DOP). A profile is generated along the cable lines, allowing  the measurement and documentation of the safety spacing of the power  lines to obstacles.

Services of the consortium:

• Flight planning, mobilisation and flight initialisation

• Laser- and image data capture: oblique and vertical imagery

• Georeferencing and classification of the lidar data

• Generation of a DTM, a DSM and a DOP

• Generation of profiles

• Vectorization of the powerlines

• Analysis of spacing to objects

• Quality control

• Technical documentation