Last time we caught up with Identified Technologies CEO and founder Dick Zhang, we talked about what sort of essential data drones can capture for and deliver to construction stakeholders, as well as how he’s able to answer questions around the kind of ROI drones can provide. With Identified’s release of their change detection technology (CDT) tool, the company has created a powerful instrument that speaks to both of these needs.
Simply put, the CDT tool allows users to make a determination about progress that has or has not been made on a job site with a single glance. The tool visually highlights what changes have taken place on a site by comparing information gathered by a drone over different time periods. Blue represents Cut (taking away of material) and Red represents Fill (adding of material). The deeper the coloration, the more change has taken place. Areas of no coloration are indicative of no change.
This simple and easy to use tool is set to open up UAV technology to various industries and to numerous people within any organization in ways that were not previously enabled.“What CDT has done is has gotten more people within an organization to be able to derive value from data captured from a UAV,” Zhang explained to Commercial UAV News. “Prior to this change, there might only be a handful of people within an organization that could make sense of all the complex data gathered by a drone and draw conclusions from it. With this tool, we're able to make that data make sense to project managers, foremen, VPs and people on the executive level instead of just the technical CAD folks. Anyone can go in and derive value and make decisions off of what they're seeing as opposed to one single person or one single type of technical operator.”The simplicity of the tool both in terms of application and operation solves a critical problem that users have been dealing with when it comes to taking advantage of data captured by a drone. While the possibilities around how drones can be used are limitless, many users simply wanted to know what had changed on a project without having to sift through a pile of data to get that answer. This new tool is designed to provide users with the ability to easily and simply turn data into actionable intelligence.“Our purpose is to be able to focus on what matters to our clients, and what matters is when things change,” Zhang continued. “If you think about a big construction site, it's a living organism. They can be enormous, and it's a lot to handle. The ability to compare, say, yesterday's flight to the day before or a week ago or even to a blueprint and understand the changes is what's so powerful. This simple capability is making the approach that can be taken around these projects that much more efficient.”Those efficiencies can more easily be quantified, which means answering questions about the kind of ROI that drone technology represents can be answered with real numbers. It’s an important consideration for organizations of all sizes as they look to figure out what drone adoption might look like.The unlimited potential of drones has many different professionals anxious to leverage the technology, but many struggle with where to begin. CDT is set to provide users with a great way to meet a critical need, which can just be the beginning of how the organization leverages the technology. 
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