Surveying’s New Frontier: Nigerian Innovators Lead UAV Revolution

By Korede Omololu-David

At a major geospatial conference held in VI, Lagos, Nigeria on 15th September 2023, a highly referred but small contingent of Nigerian researchers and private practitioner surveyors drew attention by showcasing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technologies that are redefining how spatial data are collected and used. Nigeria’s surveying profession has historically been dominated by cadastral mapping; a 2023 FIG paper observed that practitioners confine themselves to a limited scope, largely because of insufficient knowledge of modern geospatial techniques fig.net. The report warned that without embracing new tools, surveyors risk becoming irrelevant to the nation’s development fig.net. Against this backdrop, several innovators demonstrated how drones, remote sensing and GIS can meet the country’s pressing needs. Among them, Surveyor Micheal Okegbola stood out for the depth and breadth of his research.

Rising above the crowd: Micheal Okegbola’s UAV research

Mapping crime hotspots with highresolution drones (2019)
One of the earliest presentations was a 2019 study in which Okegbola and colleagues used a quadcopter drone to map crime and insecurity on a Nigerian university campus. The UAV captured images at very high resolution, so detailed that individual people, vehicles and other small objects were visible. By overlaying inventory vector data on this imagery, the team identified precise locations where fighting, theft and gangsterism occurred. The study concluded that middleclass UAVs equipped with highresolution cameras allow realtime monitoring and can be used to control crime at a fraction of the cost of traditional surveillance. The work showed how drones could enhance campus security and, by extension, community policing.

Demonstrating UAV advantages for environmental monitoring (2019–2022)

Okegbola’s interest in drones extends to environmental and resource management. In another 2019 paper, his team compared images from a DJI Phantom 4 Pro (0.15 m spatial resolution) with 30 m Landsat satellite imagery over Nigeria’s Akure Forest Reserve. The drone imagery revealed rocks, roads, bare ground and riparian vegetation in fine detail that satellites could not discern. The study highlighted the advantages of UAVs: the ability to fly below cloud cover, collect data quickly and cheaply, and deliver highresolution orthophotos for forest mapping ej-eng.org.
By 2022, Okegbola had taken on a more technical question: Can UAVderived maps meet professional accuracy standards? His team flew a drone over a 74hectare site in Oyo State, established seven groundcontrol points and generated an orthophoto and digital terrain model. They reported horizontal and vertical accuracies of 3 cm (RMSE 7 cm) and 9 cm (RMSE 7 cm) respectively irejournals.com, well within the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing’s mapping standards. The authors concluded that UAV mapping provides sufficient accuracy for topographic, cadastral and engineering surveys and recommended using more groundcontrol points and lowaltitude flights irejournals.com. This work reassured sceptical practitioners that drones are not just gadgets but serious surveying tools.

Innovating shoreline mapping and vegetation indices (2023)

At the conference, Okegbola also shared findings from his 2023 paper on shoreline mapping at Nigeria’s Erelu Reservoir. Using a middleclass UAV with an RGB camera, his team captured imagery and processed it into orthophotos with Agisoft Metashape. They then calculated several vegetation indices (NDI, VDVI, VARI, ExGExR and CIVE) in ArcGIS. These indices allowed the researchers to distinguish clear water surfaces, seasonally flooded areas, green vegetation and bare land, with the shoreline clearly defined irejournals.com. The study concluded that UAVs offer highresolution data at an affordable cost and can map inaccessible or waterlogged terrain more effectively than satellite imagery irejournals.com. It recommended that mediumclass drones be employed for shoreline monitoring and encouraged further research into visibleband indices irejournals.com.

Context: other Nigerian innovators embracing UAVs

Okegbola was not the only Nigerian researcher exploring drones. Private practitioners at the conference displayed projects ranging from precision agriculture to urban infrastructure inspections. One engineer used a quadcopter to monitor the stability of floodprone levees; another demonstrated how photogrammetric models could expedite stockpile volume calculations for construction. Yet the systematic approach evident in Okegbola’s publications, which spanned crime mapping, forest monitoring, accuracy assessment and shoreline analysis between 2019 and 2023 were more practicable and innovative.

Analyzing urban growth and landuse change (2019–2022)

Okegbola’s work has not been limited to drones. He has also applied classic remote sensing and GIS techniques to study urban growth and landuse change in Nigeria. In his 2019 thesis on Urban Sprawl Dynamics of Oyo Town for the University of Nigeria, he used Landsat imagery and population data to show that builtup area expanded dramatically between 1990 and 2016 while vegetation cover declined. The study recommended afforestation and controlled urban development to prevent environmental degradation researchgate.net. A later 2022 paper extended this work to Ogbomoso metropolis, where Okegbola and colleagues combined Landsat data from 1985–2015 with population projections. They found that builtup land increased from 3.61 % in 1985 (population 262 328) to 16.52 % in 2015 (population 829 919). Projections indicated that builtup area could reach 27.43 % by 2025 and 75.60 % by 2045, with population exceeding one million. Their recommendations included establishing a monitoring unit under the SurveyorGeneral, implementing landuse policies to protect agricultural land, developing satellite towns to decongest the metropolis and investing local revenues in education and healthcare dergipark.org.tr. These studies demonstrate Okegbola’s broader contributions to sustainable planning and environmental management.

Building capacity and promoting modern geospatial practice

Beyond his research, Okegbola is known for advocating training and curriculum reform. As a lecturer at the Federal School of Surveying in Oyo, he has mentored students in UAV operations and GIS analysis. His work responds to the FIG report’s call for surveyors to enlarge the scope of practice and adopt geospatial technology to meet Nigeria’s development needs fig.net. By showcasing drone applications across multiple domains, he encourages young surveyors to see beyond cadastral mapping and embrace datadriven decisionmaking.

Conclusion

By 2023, Nigerian geospatial professionals were beginning to chart a new course. While many private surveyors still focused on traditional tasks, innovators like Micheal Okegbola and others demonstrated that UAVs could transform crime surveillance, environmental monitoring, construction engineering and shoreline management. His research provided empirical evidence of the accuracy and costeffectiveness of drones, helping to legitimize them as professional tools. As Nigeria seeks sustainable solutions for urbanization and resource management, the country will benefit from more surveyors following his lead, adopting advanced technologies and expanding the discipline’s horizons.