With just a few more weeks to go until the commercial drone industry comes together in Las Vegas for Commercial UAV Expo 2026, we are continuing to preview this year’s conference program. Already, we have covered sessions on scaling enterprise drone programs, regulatory matters, workforce development, and the next era of drone operations. This time, we're turning to the geospatial track, where survey-grade accuracy, AEC data workflows, and the practical realities of merging UAV data with other capture methods take center stage.

Precision is the throughline across this year's surveying and mapping content, and Best Practices for Maintaining Survey-Grade Accuracy in High-Volume UAV Operations opens the track by tackling the challenge head-on. Moderated by Mohamed Mostafa of Trimble Applanix, the session brings together Michael Koterba of MJ Engineering, Joseph Dannemiller of YellowScan, and Brian Riskas of RMD Systems to walk through the hidden operational pitfalls that erode accuracy as drone programs scale from small projects to enterprise-level operations. Expect hardware selection, mission planning, and QA/QC standards to all get equal attention, with the goal of helping attendees build a high-volume surveying practice without sacrificing the data quality clients expect.

AEC firms have moved well past pilot projects with drone data, and How Leading AEC Firms Are Putting Drone Data to Work shows what embedding that data into core workflows actually looks like. The session covers five presentations spanning concrete and facade analysis from Findorff, an inside look at how AECOM built its internal UAS program with FlyFreely, AI-driven change detection on construction sites from Bentley Systems, aerial lidar-based crane and logistics planning from Dimeo Construction Company, and a data-driven approach to renewable energy capture from Aegean Energy Group. Together, the presentations trade technology showcases for transferable workflows that AEC professionals can put to use on their own projects.

Zooming out, What Drone Surveying Looks Like When All the Pieces Come Together takes stock of where the surveying profession stands as new capabilities and standards reshape the work. The session opens with Kurt Aper of Atwell on applying ASPRS positional accuracy standards to photogrammetry and lidar data, moves into Steve Pruitt of Patriot Environmental on tethered drone sonar deployment for bathymetric surveys, and closes with Juan Plaza of Plaza Aerospace Corp. on what Part 108's shift from individual to corporate liability means for aerial mapping companies. The combination gives surveying professionals a forward-looking read on BVLOS, bathymetry, and standards, grounded by the practical stakes of compliance.

Rounding out the topic, Merging UAV and Ground-Based Data: Real-World Challenges and Lessons From the Field addresses one of the field's stickier problems: getting datasets that weren't designed to work together to actually work together. David White of I-ATLAS USACE walks through how the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Mobile District's sUAS program expanded from aerial imagery into topographic lidar and eventually into full data fusion with ground-penetrating radar and terrestrial lidar, while Russell Hall of Langan Engineering and Environmental Services brings a DOT road project perspective on integrating UAV and mobile mapping data. Both presentations focus on the processing decisions and hard-won lessons that come with combining data sources under real project requirements.

Between survey-grade accuracy at scale, AEC firms building drone data into their core workflows, and the operational realities of fusing UAV data with other capture methods, this year's geospatial track reflects an industry that has moved past proving drones work and is now focused on making them work reliably, at scale, and alongside every other tool in the surveyor's kit.