………….“It’s going to be new in Africa and it’s the data that you will be happy having yourself when you look at the building footprint, you see the building standing the way they are, the road network you can appreciate the height of the building vis-a-vis the road.” OSGOF.
…………..Acquisition of data will help in the delivery of government services and private sectors in any number of ways, improving the efficiency and automation of it, it unlocks so much potential in terms of business ideas that could be used – US team leader, Frank Pichel.
The Office of the Surveyor General of the Federation (OSGOF ) team and United States of America company called the PLACE have both been inaugurated to carry out the Drone Imagery Acquisition and 3D City view of part of Abuja , the activities would commence today.
The PLACE Aerial data has a ground sample distance (GSD) of around 5cm. The is an order of magnitude better than typically available commercial satellite imagery which has a GSD of 40-50cm. But PLACE doesn’t stop at collecting aerial data. They also collect anonymized street level data.
Google and Apple generally strive for the best available commercial satellite data, the PLACE Aerial data is significantly higher resolution and thus significantly more useful for determining things like property boundaries, land use, economic activity and population. And of course it’s more than good enough for building a street map.
While speaking with the OSGOF and the US team in his office, the Surveyor General of the Federation (SGOF) Abduganiyu Adeyemi Adebomehin remarked,” It’s going to be new in Africa and it’s the data that you will be happy having yourself when you look at the building footprint, you see the building standing the way they are , at the road network you can appreciate the height of the building vis-a-vis the road. So it’s not something that anybody will come and tell you the road is not there, it’s there. You see everything in 3D this is practical.”
SGOF thanked the members of the two teams saying “I appreciate you because the journey started about one and a half years or two years ago and we want to thank everybody for their doggedness and I tell people don’t take no for an answer if , you take no for an answer you’ll just be defeated. I want to say a big thank you to members of the OSGOF team that has been working tirelessly to make this a reality and we only want to say thank you to the PLACE team and we will write officially. So that they will know that we really appreciate why you are collaborating with us.”
The Place US company team leader and Partner, Field Operation, Frank Pichel while highlighting the importance of Drone Imagery Acquisition With 3D City View said “Acquisition of data will help in the delivery of government services and private sectors in any number of ways, improving the efficiency and automation of it” Adding that “Everything from monitoring change to using it to improve and build out the road outlines.”
Frank further said that the use of data is only limited by our imagination. “Knowing that OSGOF, under their mandate, will look at how they empower other organizations. The roads transport. We could build a machine learning model to easily detect road surface types and classifications and really automate that process. So it will help in the delivery of government services in any number of ways, improving the efficiency and automation of it, as well as under OSGOF’s approvals, it unlocks so much potential in terms of business ideas that could be used.”
Signed
Henry David
Head, Information and Public Relations
12th March, 2025
