Drone Port Inspection and Survey Services in India

Geocartis works at ports and port construction projects across India: reclamation and dredge fill volumes, breakwater and berth construction progress, bulk cargo stockyard measurement, container and laydown yard utilisation, above-water structure condition, and port land and encroachment survey. Capture is at 5 cm ground sample distance or better with DGPS control and an RMSE report, or closer where the deliverable is structural condition. We are based in Ahmedabad, in the state that handles more of India’s cargo than any other.

We are a survey and inspection services company. We do not build drones, we do not sell software, and we do not carry out marine works.

Read this first: clearances, and one hazard that stops the job

Three things determine whether we can work at your port, and they need settling before a quotation.

DGCA airspace. Green zone allows operation to 120 metres above ground level without prior flight permission, yellow zone requires permission and a lower ceiling, red zone is closed. Ports frequently sit near airports, and some sit adjacent to naval or coast guard establishments that restrict the airspace regardless of anything else.

Port security. Port facilities operate under the ISPS Code with a security plan and a Port Facility Security Officer, and aerial photography over a facility is controlled by that regime. Customs bonded areas, container terminals and any facility handling sensitive cargo have their own restrictions. Permission from the PFSO or equivalent is a separate clearance from DGCA’s and it is often the longer one, particularly where crew details need vetting in advance. The Government has also signalled a Bureau of Port Security, so this environment is tightening rather than loosening.

Hazardous area classification, which is the one people forget. Oil jetties, tank farms, LPG and chemical terminals, and their surrounding areas are classified hazardous zones under the electrical area classification standards. A standard survey drone is not certified equipment for a hazardous zone. It is a potential ignition source with a lithium battery, and it does not fly in a classified zone.

That is not a preference, it is a hard limit, and any provider who offers to fly your tank farm without raising it has not understood the site. Where a survey is needed over or near a liquid bulk facility, the scope is agreed with the terminal’s HSE function, the classified zones are mapped as exclusions in the flight plan, and the survey covers what sits outside them.

On a large multi-cargo port, the practical outcome is usually partial coverage. Dry bulk yards, construction areas, container terminals and landside infrastructure may be flyable while liquid bulk berths, bonded areas and defence-adjacent zones are not. We map that before quoting and the exclusions go in writing.

Where the work is: the construction pipeline

Indian ports are in the middle of a very large capital programme, and construction is the most accessible work in this sector for a survey company.

Major ports handled 915.17 million tonnes in FY 2025-26, growing over seven percent and surpassing the target, with Deendayal at 160.11 million tonnes the top performer, followed by Paradip and JNPA. Total port capacity stands at around 2,762 MMTPA against a target approaching 3,500 MMTPA under Maritime India Vision 2030, and Maritime Amrit Kaal Vision 2047 envisages a scale-up towards 10,000 MMTPA with six mega port clusters. The Sagarmala programme targets 840 projects worth around ₹5.8 lakh crore by 2035, of which 272 worth about ₹1.41 lakh crore have been completed.

Greenfield and expansion projects under way include the deep-draft and transshipment developments at Vadhavan, Vizhinjam, VOC Tuticorin and Galathea Bay, and the Andhra coast projects at Ramayapatnam, Machilipatnam and Bhavanapadu, each built on an EPC basis with phased breakwater and berth construction.

Phased breakwater and berth construction is exactly the shape of work a survey company monitors. It is earthwork, marine fill, armour placement, concrete structures and yard formation, measured and paid by quantity, over multi-year programmes. And during construction, a greenfield port site is a construction site rather than an operating secured port facility, which removes much of the security friction described above.

Reclamation and fill volumes

Port expansion means reclamation, and reclamation is measured in millions of cubic metres.

This is the largest single measured quantity on most port projects and it is paid on volume. The argument is the same one we make on mining and legacy waste: a surveyed surface removes the interpolation that cross sections at intervals introduce, and it produces a figure that can be recomputed at any section spacing afterwards because the underlying surface exists.

What we deliver: the pre-reclamation surface where it is above water, progressive fill surfaces at agreed intervals, volumes between epochs and against the design surface, and settlement monitoring across the reclaimed area over time as the fill consolidates.

And a limit that is fundamental here. The seabed under a reclamation is below water and we cannot see it. Pre-dredge and pre-fill bathymetry, and the dredged levels themselves, come from an echo sounder survey. Our contribution is everything from the waterline up, and on a reclamation that becomes the majority of the volume once the fill emerges. The two datasets are merged at the waterline and the report states which method produced which part. Anybody presenting a single continuous surface across the waterline without saying how the underwater half was measured should be asked.

Breakwaters

Breakwater construction and monitoring is one of the neatest applications on this page and it is under-used in India.

During construction: core and underlayer progress along the alignment, armour unit placement, crest level and profile, and the advancing head. Armour units, tetrapods, accropodes, dolos and rock, are placed to a specified packing density and count per unit area, and counting them from the air over a completed section is fast and unambiguous where placement is being verified against specification.

After construction: armour displacement monitoring. Repeat survey of a breakwater registered to the same control shows which units have moved, where the crest has settled, and where the armour layer has thinned. After a cyclone or a severe monsoon, that comparison is the damage assessment, and it is far better evidence than a walk along the crest.

And the limit: only the emerged part. Armour below the waterline, toe condition, scour at the toe and the submerged profile need bathymetry or divers. On a breakwater that is a significant proportion of the structure, and we say so rather than reporting on the visible part as though it were the whole.

Berths, quays and yards under construction

Piling and pile cap progress above water, quay wall and diaphragm wall construction, deck slab casting, crane rail beam construction and rail alignment, fender and bollard installation, backfill behind the quay wall, and the yard formation, paving and drainage behind it.

Container yard and stacking area construction is straightforward large-area work: subgrade levels, pavement layers, quantities and as-built levels, in the same way as any large industrial pavement.

Progress is reported against your berth and chainage numbering, monthly or at whatever interval the programme needs, and the method is set out on our construction survey page.

Bulk cargo stockyard measurement

The recurring operational service, and the one that turns a port into a repeat client rather than a project.

Dry bulk terminals handling coal, iron ore, limestone, clinker, gypsum, fertiliser, salt, bauxite and grain hold physical stock that has to be reconciled against receipts and despatches. Weighbridge and conveyor belt weigher figures drift, and periodic physical stock verification is the check.

Manual stockpile measurement on a large yard is slow, imprecise on irregular re-handled piles, and hazardous on unstable material. Drone volumetrics measure the whole yard in a session, and repeat capture at month end gives a consistent series.

The base surface is declared in every report, because volume is the difference between the stock surface and a base, and that base is a choice: the surveyed hard standing, a previous epoch, or a defined plane. Two providers produce different volumes from the same point cloud by choosing differently.

Density is not something a survey measures. Where a tonnage figure is required, it comes from applying your sampled bulk density to our measured volume, with the calculation and the assumption stated. Bulk density varies with material, moisture and compaction, and on a monsoon-wet coal pile it is not what it was in April.

Alongside the stock measurement, the same capture gives yard layout, stack positions, encroachment of one stack on another’s footprint, drainage and housekeeping condition, and the conveyor and stacker-reclaimer corridor.

Operating port structures and assets

Above-water structure condition. Jetty and trestle decks, quay copings, crane rails and rail beams, fender systems above the waterline, bollards, and the general state of concrete and steel in a marine environment, which is about as aggressive a corrosion environment as exists in India.

Cranes and handling equipment. External structural condition of ship-to-shore cranes, rubber-tyred gantries, stackers and reclaimers, and shiploaders. High steel in salt air, difficult and slow to inspect from the ground, and straightforward from the air. Coating breakdown, corrosion, structural member condition, walkway and handrail condition, and boom and portal condition.

Conveyor corridors. Gallery and trestle condition along the length, spillage, and the transfer towers, which are tall and awkward to reach.

Container and laydown yard utilisation. Occupancy by block and row, stack heights, and empty versus laden distribution across a series of captures. Most terminals have this in their operating system; the aerial view is a check on it and it finds the yard that has quietly become a permanent store.

Port land and encroachment. Port authorities hold substantial land, much of it leased, and boundary and occupation mapping against the land record is a recurring requirement.

Post-cyclone damage assessment. East coast ports in particular take cyclones, and rapid dated capture across a whole port after an event is a considerably better basis for insurance and reinstatement than a walk-round.

What we cannot do at a port

Anything below the waterline. This is the single biggest limit and it covers a great deal of what a port cares about: berth pocket depth and maintenance dredging levels, siltation, scour at berths and breakwater toes, underwater pile and quay wall condition, and the seabed generally. These need hydrographic survey with an echo sounder, or a diver or ROV inspection. They are a separate scope with a separate provider and we will say so rather than delivering a surface that stops at the waterline and calling it a survey.

Nothing in a classified hazardous zone, as set out above.

No non-destructive testing. Steel thickness, coating dry film thickness, concrete cover, chloride ingress and half-cell potential are contact measurements. Marine concrete deteriorates from the inside through chloride attack and a photograph of an intact surface tells you nothing about it.

No structural assessment. We record and measure. Assessment of a jetty’s residual capacity or a crane’s structural condition is an engineer’s determination.

No condition certification of any structure or equipment.

Nothing inside tanks, silos, conveyor galleries, machinery houses or crane structures.

How we do it

Step 1: Clearances and the exclusion map

Airspace check, port security clearance route, and hazardous zone mapping, in that order, before a quotation exists. The output is an exclusion map showing what can be flown and what cannot, agreed in writing with the port before mobilisation.

On a recurring programme this is established once and subsequent visits are administratively simple, which is a strong argument for buying stockyard measurement as a monthly programme rather than as occasional jobs.

Crew details for security vetting are supplied in advance where the facility requires it. Our aircraft carry active Unique Identification Numbers and our pilots hold DGCA Remote Pilot Certificates.

Step 2: Control

Control goes on stable ground clear of operations: quay copings where permitted, yard edges, building corners, and areas outside the working footprint. On a working port that is genuinely difficult, because almost everything is either operational, moving, or about to be stacked on.

On a monitoring programme, permanent control is established in protected positions and re-occupied at every visit, which is what makes epoch-to-epoch volume differences defensible. A stockyard series on independently established control each month is a series of unrelated numbers.

Ports are also a difficult GNSS environment. Large steel structures, cranes, stacked containers and metal-clad sheds reflect signals, and multipath in a container yard is real. We site control in open areas, occupy longer, and check residuals rather than accepting a first fix.

Step 3: Flight planning

Ground sample distance is pixel pitch multiplied by flying height divided by focal length. A 20 megapixel one-inch sensor with 5472 pixels across 13.2 millimetres has a pixel pitch of about 2.41 micrometres, and with an 8.8 millimetre lens at 120 metres gives roughly 3.3 centimetres GSD for yard and site work.

Structure and equipment inspection is closer-range work at standoff with zoom optics, and it is a different mode with a different rate.

Obliques are standard. Quay faces, crane structures, jetty edges, breakwater flanks and stockpile sides are all vertical or steeply inclined, and a nadir block records none of them properly. Stockpile volumes in particular are systematically wrong from nadir-only capture, because the pile flanks are the volume.

Cranes are the dominant hazard. Ship-to-shore cranes are tall, move along rails and slew booms, and gantries move continuously across a yard. Crane positions and operating envelopes are exclusion volumes, operators are notified, and on an active berth the window is agreed with the terminal rather than assumed.

Step 4: Capture

Wind at a coastal site is stronger and more consistent than inland, and afternoon sea breeze is a real scheduling factor on the western coast. Salt air is hard on equipment and maintenance intervals shorten accordingly.

Dust from dry bulk handling degrades imagery, and on an active coal or ore yard it can close out a whole session. Where stock measurement is the purpose, we schedule around handling operations, and on some yards that means early morning before the day’s movements begin.

Working over water carries the usual rule: an aircraft lost over the basin is not recoverable. Flight lines over open water are planned to minimise exposure.

Nothing is flown over an occupied work area, a moving vehicle route, or a vessel at berth without the terminal’s agreement.

Step 5: Processing and reporting

Standard photogrammetric processing for the measured outputs, with classification separating stock from hard standing, plant, vehicles and structures. On a stockyard that classification is manual work: a stacker’s boom over a pile, a parked tipper against a stack face, and material spilled outside the stack footprint all need judging rather than filtering automatically.

Volumes are computed against the declared base, by stack and by material, and reported in the port’s own stack numbering.

For structure and equipment inspection, imagery is indexed by asset and component, and findings are classified and located rather than delivered as a folder of pictures.

Reports keep the same format between epochs so a monthly series is readable as a series.

Accuracy

Ground sample distance and accuracy are different quantities. For a well-controlled block, horizontal RMSE typically lands between one and two times the GSD and vertical between two and three times. At 5 cm GSD that suggests roughly 5 to 10 centimetres horizontal and 10 to 15 centimetres vertical, and the report carries the measured figures from withheld checkpoints.

On stock and reclamation volumes, systematic error is what matters. Random noise across a large surface largely cancels when integrated into a volume; a systematic vertical bias multiplies by the area. A 15 centimetre bias across a 20 hectare stockyard is 30,000 cubic metres of apparent material, which on a bulk commodity is a serious number.

Relative accuracy between epochs beats absolute accuracy for any measurement of change, provided both epochs sit on the same permanent control. That is the argument for setting the control up properly at the start of a monitoring programme.

Water surfaces produce no reliable matching and are excluded rather than interpolated, with the waterline mapped as a polygon and the tide state recorded at capture, because at a port the tide changes what is visible between one survey and the next.

Deliverables and output file formats

Raw imagery is handed over or deleted at handover, per the data handling terms agreed with the port.

Where we work

We are based in Ahmedabad, which puts us alongside the busiest cargo coastline in India.

Gujarat. Deendayal at Kandla, which handled 160.11 million tonnes in FY 2025-26 and was the top performing major port, plus Mundra, Hazira, Dahej, Pipavav, Sikka, Vadinar, Magdalla, Bhavnagar, Porbandar, Okha and the Gujarat Maritime Board’s non-major ports along the coast. Gujarat’s combination of major, non-major and private ports makes it the densest port market in the country and it is on our doorstep.

Western India. JNPA and Mumbai, the Vadhavan development, Mormugao and the Konkan ports.

Southern India. New Mangalore, Cochin, Vizhinjam, VOC Tuticorin, Chennai, Kamarajar at Ennore, Kattupalli, Krishnapatnam, Gangavaram and Visakhapatnam, plus the Andhra coast greenfield projects at Ramayapatnam, Machilipatnam and Bhavanapadu.

Eastern India. Paradip, Dhamra, Gopalpur, Haldia and Kolkata.

Inland waterways terminals. Multi-modal terminals on the national waterways, which are smaller, less restricted and often more straightforward to work at than a major port.

What we do not do

We do not survey below the waterline. Hydrographic survey, dredge depth verification, siltation, scour and underwater structure condition all require echo sounder, diver or ROV.

We do not fly in classified hazardous zones at liquid bulk, LPG or chemical facilities.

We do not carry out non-destructive testing.

We do not assess structural condition or capacity, and we do not certify any structure or item of equipment.

We do not inspect inside tanks, silos, galleries or machinery spaces.

We do not determine bulk density or convert volume to tonnage on an assumed figure.

We do not fly over a vessel at berth, an occupied work area or a bonded area without express agreement.

We do not fly in red zones or against a port’s security regime.

Frequently asked questions

Can you fly at our port? It depends on three things: the DGCA airspace classification, your port security regime under the ISPS framework, and your hazardous area classification. We check all three and return an exclusion map before quoting. On most large multi-cargo ports the answer is partial coverage rather than yes or no.

Can you survey our oil terminal or tank farm? Not inside a classified hazardous zone. A standard survey drone is not certified equipment for a hazardous area and it is a potential ignition source. We can survey what sits outside the classified zones, with the boundaries agreed with your HSE function and enforced in the flight plan.

Can you measure our coal or ore stock? Yes, and it is the strongest recurring application at an operating port. We measure volume against a declared base surface, by stack and material, in your stack numbering. Tonnage requires your sampled bulk density, which we apply with the calculation shown.

How accurate is a stockpile volume? Vertical RMSE is typically 10 to 15 centimetres at 5 cm GSD, measured from withheld checkpoints, and what matters for volume is systematic rather than random error. On a monthly series what matters most is that every epoch sits on the same permanent control, which is why we establish it at the outset.

Can you measure the dredged depth at our berths? No. That is below water and requires hydrographic survey with an echo sounder. We measure everything above the waterline and state where the measurement stops.

Can you measure reclamation volumes? Yes, from the waterline up, which becomes most of the volume once the fill emerges. The underwater portion needs pre-dredge and pre-fill bathymetry, and the two datasets are merged with the method for each part stated.

Can you inspect our ship-to-shore cranes? External structural and coating condition, yes, from a safe standoff with zoom optics, with findings classified by component. Not NDT, not steel thickness, not structural assessment, and nothing inside the structure.

Can you monitor a breakwater after a cyclone? Yes, and comparing against a pre-event survey shows which armour units moved and where the crest settled. Only the emerged part; the submerged armour and toe need bathymetry or divers.

Can you monitor construction of a new port? Yes, and this is the largest opportunity in the sector. Greenfield port construction is earthwork, reclamation, breakwater and berth work measured by quantity over a multi-year programme, and during construction the site is a construction site rather than a secured operating facility.

What file formats do you deliver? Orthomosaic and surface models as GeoTIFF. Point cloud as LAS, LAZ and E57. Drawings and sections as DXF and DWG. Volume, progress and condition reports as PDF and XLSX. Spatial layers as SHP.

Get in touch

Tell us the port and what you need: construction progress on a project, reclamation or breakwater volumes, monthly stockyard measurement, structure condition, or land and encroachment survey.

Tell us whether the facility handles liquid bulk, whether any part of the area you need surveyed is a classified hazardous zone, and who holds the port security clearance route.

We will return the airspace position, the exclusion map, the control plan, and a price for the programme.