okay so this has been bugging me for a couple weeks. im doing commercial flat roof inspections, mostly TPO and EPDM membranes, some built-up roofing. the actual flight time is fine, im using a Mavic 3 Enterprise with the thermal camera for moisture mapping and RGB for documentation. the problem is my post-processing is taking forever and im not sure if its my workflow or if im just expecting too much from the software.

right now i fly a grid pattern, collect thermal and RGB simultaneously, then try to correlate them in DroneDeploy. the thermal anomaly identification is where i lose like half a day per project. is anyone doing this faster with a different approach? im wondering if i should be doing separate flights optimized for each sensor instead of trying to do both at once, but that feels like it would take longer overall.

projects are typically 50,000 to 200,000 square feet if that matters. and before anyone asks yes i know about flying during the right thermal window, i do morning flights after the roof has had time to equilibrate, thats not the issue

the separate flights thing is actually worth trying even though it sounds counterintuitive. when you fly thermal optimized ? slower speed, lower altitude ? the data quality goes up enough that the anomaly identification gets easier and faster in post. when you try to optimize for both at once you end up with thermal data thats just marginal enough to make you second-guess everything and thats where you lose time staring at the screen.

also are you doing any automated anomaly detection or is it all manual review? there are some options within DroneDeploy and also some standalone tools like Aervision or even just running the thermal through FLIR Thermal Studio first to get a pre-annotated dataset before you bring it into the mapping platform. not perfect but it can cut initial review time pretty significantly.

whats your GSD on the thermal pass? because if youre flying too high to cover the area fast the thermal resolution suffers and then yeah post processing becomes a nightmare trying to figure out if somethings actually wet or just a shadow artifact or whatever. ive found on large TPO roofs i need to be pretty aggressive about staying low on the thermal pass even if it means more flight time. the M3E thermal sensor is decent but its not a radiometric beast, you have to work with it a bit.

also kind of off topic but have you had any pushback from roofing contractors when you find moisture intrusion? we had a situation where the contractor disputed our findings and it turned into a whole thing. just wondering how other people handle that professionally