Fast, accurate determination of volumes of bulk materials and quarry workings has become an integral part of operations in many sectors: agriculture, mining, transport, construction and warehousing.
Modern geoinformatics technologies solve this task efficiently. The method is based on building a three‑dimensional Digital Surface Model (DSM) of the bulk pile and performing computations on that model.
Previously, DSMs were built from total station surveys (discrete point measurements and surface modelling). Today the most common methods are:
— Laser scanning with a terrestrial scanner or airborne LiDAR;
— Photogrammetric processing of stereo pairs from terrestrial or aerial photography. UAVs (drones) are widely used for aerial capture, especially on smaller sites.
Both methods produce point clouds that allow rapid construction of highly accurate, detailed surface models and precise volume calculations (to about 0.5%).
Typical use cases:
— Earthwork cut/fill quantities in construction;
— Volume measurement of quarry workings in mining;
— Inventory of stockpiled raw materials and finished products (ores, coal, sand, grain, root crops, etc.).