Pre-Incident Planning for FIFA: Turning Drone Data into 3D Operational Readiness

What if with just a few moments of focused effort in the right software, you could significantly enhance your preparedness, deployment, and operational effectiveness of for large scale events like FIFA? Like, exactly what we're gonna walk through today. Welcome, everyone, and thanks for joining us for part two of our FIFA preparedness series. In our first session, we focused on what it takes to deliver zero failure security operations for events for the scale size of FIFA.

We discuss aligning teams, building resilient ConOps, and ensuring every moving piece is coordinated before the first fan ever arrives. Today, we're gonna take that one level deeper because the reality is no matter how strong your plan is on paper, execution comes down to how well you understand the environment. And that's where drone captured data and photogrammetry fundamentally changed the game. So today, we're going to focus on how you move from planning to operational readiness.

We'll discuss how to capture your environment at scale, how to turn the data into accurate three d models and digital twins, and most importantly, how to turn those models into actionable intelligence that supports planning, training, and real time operations.

Because when every stakeholder, from incident command to field operators, are working from the same high fidelity understanding of the environment, you reduce uncertainty, identify risk earlier, and execute with far greater precision.

From a Skydio perspective, this is exactly where autonomous drones and automated capture workflows come in, enabling teams to rapidly build, continuously update a shared common operating picture.

We've got a great group with us today, building perspectives from public safety, fire, and advanced 3D modeling. So we're excited to walk you through not just the technology, but how this is being applied in real world event planning today.

Let's get started with introductions and the team we brought together for today's session. My name is Jason LaFond. I've spent the last thirty years in public safety, and today, I serve as a public safety strategist here at Skydio, where I focus on helping agencies operationalize drone programs for complex, high risk environments like major events. Joining me today is Noreen Charlton from Skydio's public safety team. Noreen?

Thanks, Jason. Hey, everyone. I'm Noreen. I lead public safety strategy here at Skydio and unofficially serve as the public safety PIO.

In a former life, I worked for Las Vegas Metro PD. So I have spent many of my years documenting high profile scenes across the country using three d technologies. And I've been doing that for reconstruction and forensic analysis. And I've also been supporting pre incident mapping and planning for soft target locations in schools.

So as much as I love all things DFR, this topic mapping and modeling is something that's really near and dear to me. So really looking forward to this conversation.

We're also joined by Captain Tyler Grosser from the Kansas City, Missouri Fire Department. Tyler.

How you doing? I'm Tyler Grosser with Kansas City, Missouri Fire Department. Been here for twenty five years. Currently serve as the UAS coordinator, in our special operations division and, happy to be here.

And finally, Bret Gardner from GNEXT.

Hey, Jason, Noreen, and and all you Skydians. Many thanks for having us join. I'm Bret Gardner with GNEXT. I handle sales for North America, work with utilities, transportation, and and was chosen by public safety to join. So I've been in this space for well over a decade back when a demo used to be, hey, it stayed in the air, not hey, look at this actual intelligence it's giving me. And so happy to be here and look forward to diving in.

Thanks, Bret, and welcome all. We've intentionally brought together this mix of strategy, operations, and technical expertise to give you a complete picture of how this comes together in practice.

Today's agenda, we'll talk about what it takes to capture these environments. We'll talk about some of the post processing photogrammetry process. What are those workflows? What are some of the equipment that you need to capture these environments? What are the capture modes on the Skydio platform? And then the most important part, how do we turn that model into actual intelligence? What is the value that that model brings to us as an agency for pre event planning?

So planning everywhere, right? So start planning now. So in our first series, we talked about from a preplanning perspective, all of the things that as a UAS program manager, as leadership in a technology unit within agency, leadership within public safety, all the different plans that you need to think about. We talked about developing a con ops communication plan, and we talked a little bit about mapping and modeling with photogrammetry. And today, we're gonna get into a deep dive of that.

So large scale events like FIFA don't operate in static environments. They are in many ways temporary cities where infrastructure evolves daily, crowd dynamics shift consistently, and risk is introduced in many ways and are difficult to fully anticipate without the right level of visibility.

So some key considerations. So today, these sites look like empty parking lots. There's nothing set up. But as you start to map these environments today and then continuing to map those as the event infrastructure gets set up, these environments are going to change over time.

And you truly get to understand how complex these sites are when the stages and the tents and the barricades and everything goes up in the staging locations, modeling these spatial environments is really important. It helps you start to understand crowd flow and access routes. So what are the entry and exit points so you can manage crowds? What are the emergency lanes?

What are the choke points? You can start to mitigate and identify these in early planning processes, so that way when you get to real life, you've thought through all of these challenges. What are the infrastructure? How do they change?

Fencing, ingress, egress routes. Right? That normal road that you would drive up to these sites today, whether it's a stadium location or a hotel or VIP route or a fan fest area, those routes will likely be inaccessible. There'll be barrier checkpoints, so working through those using these models.

From a safety and compliance standpoint, how do these environments work with some of the considerations around airspace awareness and some operational constraints? And then most importantly is how can you collaborate using this tool? So sharing it with internal and external stakeholders so everybody is in the loop as you plan for these events.

It was important to call out some regulatory considerations when you fly these. So unless you have a beyond visual line of sight waiver, these are visual line of sight flights. So you need, as a pilot, the ability to see unimpeded that aircraft while it's flying. Now, that gets very complex as you try to map very large areas. You're gonna see later in this webinar some of the sites that Tyler has captured as part of his pre event planning process. And these are massive sites that take many battery scans and some time to complete. So, they consider recommending and do this now so you get it in time is getting a BVLOS waiver from the FAA.

Right now, the turnaround time on these waivers is pretty quick, on average one to two weeks. We have a great resource. So if you want to scan that QR code or the link will be in the chat here too as well, this is a great guide that Skydio produced to help you walk through that step by step process of how to obtain a Part ninety one waiver. If you don't have a waiver today, get started, get your waiver, get it in time so you can conduct these beyond visual line of sight, two hundred feet shielded operations under this new waiver.

We also recommend using a parachute. These are very complex environments. It may be difficult from a mapping perspective to avoid operating over people and vehicles. So highly recommend that you use a parachute when flying these type of missions.

And most importantly, know your airspace. So right now, the airspace may be just restricted or Class G airspace based on your proximity to an airport, but as you get closer to the events and TFRs start to go in place, coordinate very closely with your stakeholders, both the FIFA's UAS coordination group, who's doing an amazing job of coordinating FIFA UAS operations across the sites, in addition to FAA stakeholders too as well, so to make sure that you're safely operating with the authorizations to fly in these environments.

So now we'll get into a little bit more of the tactical part of this conversation, a little bit of enablement here. So essentially, what is photogrammetry? Photogrammetry at a high level is the process of capturing a large number of overlapping images from different angles, then using specialized software to identify common points in those images, and then reconstruct those into an accurate, measurable 3D model of the environment. What that means in practice is you're not just collecting photos at top down, cardinal directions, you're creating a spatially accurate digital representation of the real world. In an event planning context, this becomes incredibly powerful. We'll show a difference between maybe just some static photos or what Google Maps would look versus capturing and processing these models into these environments.

Tyler, question for you. So when did the fire department start using photogrammetry and how has it had an impact of the operations you guys do?

We started using it at the inception of our drone program.

So around, I don't know, three years or so ago is when we started getting into the mapping world and started out trying to do 3D models with some legacy software that was pretty cumbersome. So it's gotten a lot better as technology has progressed. And and so we use it consistently now for things of this nature, typically preplanning or other special situations where where we need to capture capture something in in great detail versus just a 2D map.

Yeah. And when you've you've you've created these models and you've showed leadership within the fire department, what has been their response? Did they see value in modeling versus maybe a site walkthrough or understanding the environment? Like, what has been their feedback? How powerful was it to them?

Yeah. I think that that's the premise of it. I mean, initially, everybody's blown away by the technology. But once you get past the initial reaction, I think that you're actually able to bring a walkthrough to a tabletop and a much more realistic perspective, which just naturally allows people to kind of immerse themselves in thinking about potentials or other situations. So I think that that's really where it it helps with the pre planning and and decision making process.

Yeah. Thanks, Tyler. And I'm sure the fire department uses photogrammetry for many other use cases within the fire service for scene documentation, cause and origin investigation. There are just so many things. Obviously, today's conversation is focused around pre event planning, but in public safety in general, photogrammetry is a very powerful tool for many different use cases.

So when we think about the photogrammetry, I like to talk about it in a three step process. So process one or step one is capture the environment. So you're going to create automated mapping missions using a Skydio drone and three d scan software to rapidly capture the entire event footprint. So you're gonna capture the venue, the access routes, the surrounding terrain, and temporary infrastructure.

And then you're gonna upload that imagery to a software platform. And step two of this is image processing and three d modeling.

So you've got to take those images with side lap and overlap, and you're going to turn them into a digital twin. You're going to sync those photos to your platform of choice, and they're going to create high resolution orthomosaics and accurate 3D models of the site.

And then step three of the process is this is the value. So what are these models and how can they create actual intelligence? So plan smarter, respond faster, operate with confidence, using the digital twin to support pre event planning like operations and post event analysis. For example, planning for crowd flow and ingress, egress, some of the things that we just spoke about.

So what will you need to do these missions? So there's some equipment needs and there's some software needs. On the equipment side, you need a Skydio X10 system and controller, and you need a few batteries.

The larger the scan area, maybe the more batteries you need to capture that environment, anywhere from a one battery to a four or five battery scan.

You'll need SD cards with plenty of space to capture these large data sets.

A RTK attachment on the top is optional. It depends on the needs of the model and how accurate you want the model to be. RTK is much more important from a collision or crime scene recon investigation use case. So RTK attachments just make the data a little bit more accurate for these models.

And then a tripod. I like placing the controller using the quarter twenty connection in the back. I like placing it on a tripod. That way it gives me this hands free ability to monitor the aircraft while it's flying, monitor the condition around me.

It gives me a little bit of free time with my hands to work on other functions and not having to place the controller down on the ground or on the truck or something like that.

From a software perspective, just the software that comes with Skydio X10 will give you one of the scan modes. 3D scan software will give you additional scan capabilities.

And then you need a third party post processing photogrammetry tool in order to take those photos and create models out of them.

So let's get down to the nitty gritty. So how are we going to get this done? So there are a few capture modes within our platform. So map capture is a 2D orthomosaic. So how you plan this map is you get a base map on the controller and it drops a poly, you adjust the size of that, you set your altitude, it will give you your GSD, how many photos it will take, and what is your runtime or how many batteries will it take to capture that environment. And every Skydio system, regardless if you have a three d scan license or not, has the ability to form map capture or 2D orthomosaics. In addition, surface capture is another capture mode that comes with a 3D scan license.

The difference here is instead of planning the scan volume on a map, you just physically fly and drop pillars around an environment. And where that's important is if there's infrastructure being bought right now, and for example, that infrastructure, that building is not on the base map, it's hard to represent and plan that mission around something that doesn't exist. So then the solution would be you're just going to launch the drone, fly that site, physically drop those pillars and create that scan volume. Another scan mode is three d scan capture. So here you create a floor, ceiling and pillars in environment, and the drone would do an exploratory flight within that volume. It will plan its XYZ flight path to provide you overlapping coverage of that full scan volume. And then you upload that dataset and create these amazing 3D scan models of things.

And then also the last scan mode is indoor capture. So if you have a warehouse, a large space where you also want to map not only the outside of that structure in that area, but also flying an indoor capture model in a GPS denied environment, capturing what that indoor environment looks like. And then you can post process them together and separately and create this awesome walkthrough from what the environment looks like outside and then moving into that environment, obviously a virtual environment to see what that indoor space looks like.

So what that workflow looks like is you're going to define your mission objectives, right? So what is the area that you want to define? Like what are the outcomes? I want to capture a model of a motorcade route, and our goals is to understand that route, look for the risks, the mitigations, look for the choke points, and maybe your mission objective is I want to capture this stadium and I want to use this for preplanning.

So understanding going into it what you want to get out of it helps set this up for success. Next is preflight planning and safety checks. So not only doing your hardware, your Skydio system preflight checks, but also checking your weather conditions. What is the airspace, gaming authorization if you need it, and what is your risk assessment of that area as you operate?

What is the scan parameters? So, what is the area of interest defining that area of the scan? What are your site boundaries? What are your key points of interest within that site you wanna make sure you capture?

What are your identified hazards? What is your flight altitude and your overlap requirements too as well? Then you're going to go out and you're going to execute your scan mission. You're to select one of those scan modes based on the use case in the mission objectives.

You're going to execute that mission and you're gonna Before you break everything down, you're gonna perform an on-site data validation. This is a QAQC check. You just wanna make sure that you have complete coverage of the area that you want to capture.

Then if you need to, you can secure and archive that raw data.

If you're a customer that has evidence dot com, you could just media sync that media into evidence dot com, and then archive that raw data set in your digital evidence management system. And then you also take that dataset, upload it to a photogrammetry tool, and then mark it up, which is the next step is uploading these to your photogrammetry software of choice, which then may generate this great two d orthomosaic point cloud and 3D model.

Next, you're going to process this data, and then you want to mark it up and analyze and annotate it. So dropping in flags, points of interest, marking out different areas, and we're going to show you a little bit of that in a live demo here coming up.

And then how do you make it valuable? Is you distribute it to stakeholders. So sharing it whether through the cloud platform or creating export deliverables, creating maybe a JPEG from a model, plugging into a PowerPoint presentation, overlaying some of that, and then that's part of your pre event planning meetings that you're going into.

And then as those environments change over time, you want to maintain and update the model. So you're gonna refly these missions, reprocess those new datasets so you can see that change occur over time.

So Bret and Tyler, question for you. So what are some of the most important considerations when you're planning a structure, a scan of a stadium or in preparing for an event? Are there specific settings that you guys recommend, different procedures, things that you like to do that are some lessons learned?

How do those I'll take that.

The first part of that is ask yourself the question, what is this data going to help me decide was your first bullet point? And and that's gonna drive the capture strategy.

Do you need to know just have situational awareness? Because you could do a scene like that with a couple hundred images or couple thousand images depending on what it is that you want to that you want to see. Typically, seventy seventy minimum overlap to to get some of that that that clarity. But what else what else would you add to that, Tyler?

Yeah. I I mean, I think there's a lot of considerations when it when it comes to 3D imagery. I mean, it it depends on it depends on a lot of different factors. One of them being how much time you have. You know, obviously, if you're using it for, tactical planning or you're doing, some kind of a reconstruction where, you know, fine detail is important, you know, that's all gonna dictate the amount of time that you have to or you wanna spend, I guess, should say, to capture it. But not the least of which considerations is gonna be the airspace that you're in.

Know, Skydio does a really good job on on kind of automatically selecting the the optimum settings for you in 3D scan.

And so if if you're just getting into this, I would recommend not not trying to change those settings as much as possible. But But when you do start changing them, you will notice a difference in quality. You'll notice a difference in detail.

If you're using RTK, it will give you far better accuracy.

I would recommend absolutely getting ahold of your local DOT, typically road authority. They usually have a robust RTK system that they allow public safety to utilize so you don't have to create your own network.

And then I think the most important thing that affects everything is overlap, just like Bret said.

And people try to cut corners or make things go faster by reducing that overlap. And it does, it makes it go faster, but it will absolutely destroy your final product.

I would just add to that is that data capture, you're public safety, utility, transportation, capture is the Achilles heel. And so there's some art and science too, but that's why we've got great teams to help support your success in that.

If I can just jump in with two things really quickly.

Historically, if you've been doing map capture, there's been plenty of software out there that you can connect to your drone and you tell it what to do and it goes out and it takes the map capture for you. And so there's a lot of guesswork that's taken out of it, especially if you understand the appropriate overlap for your images as everyone has already mentioned here. But what makes 3D scan unique with Skydio is that it's autonomously capturing things for you in this three d space. You're getting that Z access and not just your XY, and you don't have to overthink it.

You don't have to think too much about where do I have to take these photos and how many do I have to take it just you tell it the entire volume of the area that you want to capture and it goes and it does its thing and it comes back. You have the ability to look at it right then and there before you leave the scene. So it's not like you have to go back to a computer, put everything together and then realize that you've missed some things like you can verify all of that on scene before you leave, which will inevitably save you a lot of time. But I think the other piece of this is that's really important is understanding kind of what this three d is giving you.

I think historically a lot of agencies have only worried about the 2D map, which is obviously important for everyone wants a printed out map or a diagram and ingress and egress, but this 3D is providing you with capabilities you haven't had otherwise. And if you have been using other tools in the past, like a terrestrial laser scanner, you know, those can take a long time.

Can take, they are huge, huge data sets, which means you need a lot of memory on the computer to process them. You need to find a good way to store them and share them. And it's not always super easy, but using a drone to get all of this same data is doing it in a fraction of the time and giving you immediate results right there on your controller that you can check before you, you know, or as I always used to go back to a computer and realize I was missing stuff and having to go back to the scene. So I just wanted to throw those pieces out there as well.

Awesome. Thanks, Noreen, for the additional insight.

So we've talked about the planning process. So what are the objectives of the model? How do you plan for these missions? And we just walked you through the capture process. So what is that step by step workflow to capture these environments using the different scan modes or capture modes? Next is you take that dataset and then you post process it. There are many photogrammetry tools that Skydio worked with.

We're excited today that Bret is joining us. So Bret, what should an agency think about when they're evaluating different photogrammetry tools for pre event planning?

I'm an old school hands on kind of person, so the ability to get an evaluation to see does it fit your workflow is huge. Security is a big issue.

Do they have typically SOC two type two is the type of security they want.

Also, based is where a lot of this is going because as Noreen mentioned, your computing power is now outsourced.

I said being able to have that in the cloud is enormous, and we also have, do they have cloud to cloud connectivity with the drone manufacturer?

I think those are all important pieces to the puzzle. And bottom line, at the end of the day, you need someone that's gonna give you solid customer support, and be there in the trenches when things Again, there's art and science. It doesn't always go perfectly, and it's not a matter of if, it's when, and it's how you deal with it at the end of the day.

Thanks, Bret. And I appreciate your support of the Skydio customers too as they that they plan and prepare for the upcoming FIFA game.

And that's Without a doubt.

Their success is our success, and we're here to make everyone, as you said, operable out of the gate.

Thanks, Bret. If you'd like to learn more about all of the integrations that Skydio support through Skydio Extend, please scan this QR code, and we'll put the link in the chat here. Visit our integration page and learn about all of the integrations that Skydio supports in DFR command.

So step three of the process now is So we've planned it, we've captured it, and how do we make this valuable? What is the value prop here of these models?

And I like to think of it as kind of three different gates or milestones. So today's conversation is focused on pre event. We're in this pre event planning mode ahead of FIFA. We have all this work to do.

Photogrammetry, just one part of the thing that we're working on. We talk about all those different plans that we're considering right now for these events. So we're doing all these actions, right? And then the event kicks off or an incident occurs, and then we have these models captured. So we're prepared, we're not caught flat footed. We have this real time intelligence is the next gate. So we pull this tool up, we use this digital twin for real time awareness when an event or something happens during these events.

And then what happens after the event? The games will end, the stadiums will go down, the stands will go down, and then there's gonna be a ton of lessons learned. So using these models and post incident after actions or hot washes or debriefs is a great tool to bring these groups back together, all these stakeholders within public safety, and then have these debrief sessions after the FIFA event wraps up. What did we learn? What can we do better? And then apply those for future event planning too as well.

We're totally focused kind of We're heads down thinking about FIFA, but all of your jurisdictions, you have events around the year. So while it may not be at the scale of FIFA, there's still a ton of value in applying these lessons learned and these workflows and these tools to any event you may have in your jurisdiction. So Noreen, you have a ton of experience in photogrammetry for crime scene and different environments.

Based on your experience, how have models helped improve the outcomes of incidents?

Yeah, I mean, this is a topic I could talk about for quite a while here. But I think what's important to take away, especially in this instance, when we're talking about FIFA or just pre incident planning in general is, training takes a lot of effort and most agencies are lucky if they even get training days. Like I know there are oftentimes I ask an agency like, oh, how many training days you get a year? And I get laughed at, There just isn't time and you're short staffed. You don't have a whole lot for that.

On top of it, it's really hard to coordinate getting all of the right people out to these particular spaces to do, like in person drills or coordinated efforts for training purposes, especially when you're crossing jurisdictions. So 3D data makes this so much easier to do in a tabletop exercise. You have the three d data that can be put through VR systems. You could virtually walk through these environments as many times as you possibly want.

And that gives you kind of this muscle memory. You're not walking into these locations, not knowing what is to the left of that doorway or what is around the corner if you go down this hallway, you've been there virtually, you've seen it in 3D, whether it's manipulating it in the software or you've created kind of a fly through video of it, or you've done this VR training, it's all muscle memory. And so being able to understand the location, God forbid, if something happens and you all have to go in that, kind of all of that in preparation, but beyond that, and captain, I'd like you to speak on this.

When you talk about these tabletop exercises, you're making sure that all of the people that need to be in the know that are making decisions are on the same paper.

How are you managing this data and sharing it across not only your teams, but potentially across different departments and then different agencies when it's a multi jurisdictional or task force that's doing these things?

Yeah, that's a good question. I'm glad you asked because it's an important component.

I think the most common way in the way that we do is through ATAK, the TAK platform. So we upload three d imagery into the TAK platform, and then we end up overlaying a whole multitude of other components on top of that, along with, you know, drone detection and and ADS B functionality. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. But what's important is, going right back to what you said, you know, it it actually you take the tabletop into the field and in the operational space, you overlay, just actual floor maps of the structure that you 3D mapped and it becomes a wildly powerful platform in the palm of your hand that's there that's there with you, as a communication tool and a logistics tool, and everybody becomes, synchronized on the same page. So that's how we go about it, but but I'm sure there's other options out there as well.

And kind of a follow-up to that. How often would you say that, like, let's say for a FIFA event, how far out are you starting this planning and these conversations together so that you're all working together and communicating effectively? And how so how far out do you start that? And how often do you usually have these kind of preparation meetings?

Yeah. So we started a year and a half out, for FIFA. So we stood up, and that's that's drone specific. So we stood up a drone task force with all of our federal partners and about fifty five different local agencies that surround Kansas City that may have a part to play in this, whether it's mutual aid or spillover into these smaller communities.

So it started a long ways out and we started meeting once a month and that continued up until about three weeks ago. Now we're meeting every two weeks and then that'll ramp up to every week as it gets a little bit closer.

And the coordination has been immense, right? I think that the typical amount of people that attend the meetings is about ninety different representatives and these are these are representatives at all levels of government even, you know, it's been in the White House. So it it is a it's an enormous mountain to climb, no doubt, on the planning end of it. But I think that if you have the foresight to start that early, things just become pretty fluid by the end of it and everybody's on the same page.

Yeah, thanks, Tyler. I think the common thread here is that creating one model, one map of these environments can be used through this full life cycle of this incident, right? From pre event to post incident, it's one model, one common operating picture.

So we'll talk briefly about maybe just a few use cases of photogrammetry for pre event planning. There's probably too many to fit on one slide. We just talked about tabletop exercise and scenario planning, and one of the things that you could do, which is really cool, is you can simulate incidents. So crowd surge, vehicle threat, maybe medical response, maybe a fire, maybe a suspicious device or package, and then you could plan that.

You plan that out, plan the response. Where are your personnel gonna stage, what are their access routes, and then work through those together as a group and refine and iterate until you get to a point where come game day or match day, when one of these things happen, the team is in lockstep, they know what to do, and they can execute much quicker strategically because we've thought through these things together. Route planning and movement coordination. So mapping the VIP routes for VIP, emergency, evacuation, what are the routes, what are the choke points, what are the access constraints, what are the different staging areas, where will pedestrians be allowed to cross that could be a checkpoint, right?

Identifying those, mapping them, and marking them out on the map too is a useful tool. Line of sight and visibility analysis. So from an elevated position, see where adversaries could potentially post up and see different high buildings around your area. What is the field of view?

What is the perspective from those elevated positions? Not only are going to want to identify those, but as your event is going on, those are going to be key points that you're going to do security patrols and ensure that those rooftops are secured and safe.

Site familiarization and operational readiness. So manipulating the model, walking through the model, it's an immersive virtual, like as Noreen said, even using this in a 3D goggles too as well to really get immersed in what these environments look like. And the goal here is just to make sure that all stakeholders are aligned in what this truly looks like.

And risk identification and mitigation. So what are your hazards?

Where are there crowd flow risk? Where are we staging personnel? And what are those contingencies? These are just many of the use cases for pre event planning in addition to just spatial awareness during a real time incident. So making sure that key stakeholder groups within public safety, so your EMS tactical team, your maybe SWAT or special weapons emergency services team, your fire task force, they all have access to this model. It's already up on their phone or the MDTs. And that way, if an event something, an incident happens, they can pull these up, spatially get oriented in what this environment looks like and make informed decisions into how to address that situation.

And also, counter UAS planning too as well. So obviously, Counter UAS is a big part of the FIFA games.

The FIFA organization is doing great training out there too in coordination, but from a UAS perspective, just one of the many use cases is just planning out your UAS posture for these events too as well, and where those assets will be.

So here's the problem. Google Maps is often out of date. So we're gonna show you an example. This is gonna get a bit interactive.

So this is a site in Kansas City, Missouri. This is the Origin Hotel, and this is the CPKC Stadium. If you pull this site up today in Google Maps, this is what you see.

And to zoom in on kind of two key points in this map, On the left is CPKC Stadium. Today, Google Earth, Google Maps, it's heavily under construction. None of the infrastructure, barricades, fencing is up. But in comparison, the image on the right is just a screenshot from the map capture from the photogrammetry that we ran.

And just one more example too as well. And now here's the hotel. This is a hotel that one of the teams will be staying at. Right?

We wanna be part of our pre event planning in Google Earth. This is a hotel under construction. Right? It's under construction.

There are construction trailers out there. The parking lot doesn't even exist. And then compare that to the right. This is what the real environment looks like, and that's what it looks like today.

And then again, as the environments change over time, remodeling those. So this is where we get into the bit more of an interactive. So if you can, on your phone, if you'd like to scan this QR code, and we'll also drop the link in the chat too as well so you can get to it. And I'm going to switch my screen over to the live model in gNEXT.

And then as you scan this QR code, you can see this model in GNEXT. You can manipulate it with your fingers. You can zoom in, zoom out by pinching. You can rotate the model, and you can see different key points of interest within this model.

To put this into context, you may be thinking to yourself, I don't have the time to do this.

This is great. I see the value, but I got so many things to worry about. I got to ramp up personnel. I got to train more drone pilots.

I got to figure out how I'm going to charge batteries. I don't have time to model these. So just to give you some context, this map that you're seeing here live in GNEXT, this was an eighteen minute flight with the Skydio X10, which captured about seven fifty photos. That was all uploaded to GNEXT.

It took a few hours for it to post process, and then what you get as an output is this amazing 3D model. And I'm just going to kind of zoom around and zoom in and zoom out of this model just so you can kinda get a feel of what these spatial environments look like.

So if I look for example, we just talked about line of sight planning. So if I zoom in to this rooftop, part of my security planning is understanding what is line of sight. So here I can start to get a perspective and understanding, all right, from this rooftop in this elevated position, what could an adversary see here? So they can see obviously the outside and possibly some seats here on the far side, and I can kind of do these quick evaluations from both these rooftops as I just manipulate this model.

Now, from a fire service perspective, planning out where is your water supply. So part of your pre event planning for fire departments are going be all right. If there's an incident, there's a fire, where are we going to get water? So we have a river here.

Maybe we can indicate in here, let's say the fire hydrant system goes down, there's not enough water, we need to draft from the river. We're going to stage an engine here. We're going to put a relay pumper two thousand feet away and then get the water to the scene that we need to.

We can also mark out here fire hydrants. So to give you what I'm saying, if I zoom into this model, here's a fire hydrant.

And, Jason, just show them real quick. Double click on that, and you can see so you can then investigate what's under the underlying image is is there as well. So the model becomes that navigation.

So that that's a great call out, Bret. So, we talked about the photogrammetry process at a high level. It's taking photos, finding that side lock and overlap, piecing it into a model, but you always have the underlying raw imagery. There was an image or many images likely that made this part of the model. If you need to get in to get more tight, maybe get more detail on a certain area, or better yet, see what's there pre versus post incident, you could always get into the core imagery that made the raw data set that made this model.

Yeah, great call out.

So you'll see this square here around the Origin Hotel, and I'm gonna go back to the slide deck and walk you through a pretty interesting use case and such easy thing that you could do with a model is security perimeter planning. So as I mentioned before, this is a hotel that a team will be staying at. We're going to need law enforcement's going to want to create a hot zone, a perimeter around this hotel. So part of that is, well, from a resource standpoint, well, how much barricades do I need to do that?

Maybe more traditional methods would be going out with a roller or doing a sidewalk with a tape measure and measuring to get that, and how much time does that take and how labor intensive is that. But within probably five minutes, I was able to drop four lines within G Next.

Each of those lines gave me a linear footage of each of those slides. I add them up. I get a perimeter of about fourteen hundred feet. Right? One thousand three hundred and sixty six feet to create a perimeter around that hotel. I divide that by eight and a half. Each barricade is eight and a half feet, and that tells me to create a security zone around this hotel, I need one hundred and sixty one barricades.

Now, scale that out. Let's say you want to line this roadway right here in the model. If you're still looking at the model on your map, you see that runway, that'll be a zone.

How many feet do I need to line that with barricades? You can easily do that in a model. And that's just one of the live use cases that I wanted to show you.

Now we're gonna get into another model. So this is the Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City. This model was processed by Tyler and Alex Joyce from LiveU.

And I'm going to switch here to the live model in a moment, but Tyler, if you can, talk to us about what it took to create this model. Like how many flights did you do? What was the flight time?

How did you stage? Did you move yourself around as you captured and executed this mission?

What was that process that you did?

Sure, yeah. So we're actually gonna talk about two different models and on two different scales, I guess. So this was the first one that we did and and we captured it. It took about an hour.

So a couple battery swaps.

I don't remember the number of images that were in this one, maybe less than a thousand I think. And make no mistake, I mean it's a large area but we went on to do this, much, much larger area, which took, four and a half hours, subsequent number of battery swaps to get that amount of continuous flight. And no, we did not move around. We stayed parked as empty parking lot, obviously. So we just you can actually see where we're parked on the map, but we stayed parked.

Some concerns, obviously, to make sure.

We flew both of these missions at very different heights, very different parameters or altitudes, I guess I should say. So this one is a pretty high altitude and and it, this is in a really great location for airspace, to be honest with you. So that wasn't much of a concern, but but you will need to have beyond visual line of sight waiver to do stuff like this at higher altitudes, I would say.

So yeah, this one was equivalent of about five thousand images and and the other one was just the stadium itself was probably seven hundred.

Okay. So to kinda put it in comparison, the model we just looked at, it took us eighteen minutes, about seven fifty photos to capture that environment. Now, this one took you, like you said, around four hours to capture. And so you can get a comparison of the size and breadth of a scale and scope that you can model these.

Now, in this live model in GeneX, we can see there's a bunch of markups here. And as you sit in pre planning meetings, you're hearing things about staging areas and fencing and whatnot, and then you're taking that back and building it into the model. There's, again, that common operating picture. Todd, if you can walk us through some of the things that you implemented in this map.

What are these different boxes and these yellow lines? What do these represent in the real world?

Yeah, I think it's something important to call out with any event at this scale.

Chances are the landscape that you have grown accustomed to seeing is going to change immensely because of what organizations like FIFA do when they come in. They want to transform it into their own environment and they don't really you know, they have to remove all of this branding and and they really want it to be known as their event, obviously. So with that being said, they also changed the entire dynamic and flow of how normal operations on a day to day would go. So this yellow line that goes around the entire perimeter is actually a twelve foot fence.

So they have a concept called the last mile.

There will be no vehicles on behalf of the the fans that will realistically be allowed within a mile of the stadium. So there's a bunch of parking lots that they're gonna be shuttling people in on buses.

And then there won't be any actual fan parking at the stadium. So they're gonna fence off this entire area, establish their entry points. And it's a pretty robust process just to allow fans in. They have to be go through different types of detection and and working dogs and all the things necessary to prevent things from coming in. But some of these other areas that are annotated here, obviously staging points areas where public safety resources are going to be located, tunnel entries that go under the stadium that will be used for ingress or egress primarily on behalf of employees or public safety to the broadcasting areas. That's important because this is where the broadcast or media drones will be launching and landing. So that's going to be an area where public safety needs to be aware of that and probably stay out unless necessary.

And then anything from logistics command areas, to what they call fan zones, which are temporary structures built in the parking lot here, that they'll have whatever activities built up for the fans. So there's also a good amount of of things that we took off of this map or redacted for security reasons, but different different things in the periphery like counter UAS locations, sniper locations, command posts, things of that nature. But in addition to that, you can see these different black dots. Those are all fire hydrants.

We use a color coding system. So these are all on a twelve inches main all the way across that parking lot. And then there just so happens to be one of them on the corner that's not in service. And we know that based off of our mapping software that we use.

So we can mark that and then everybody going into the event unless they fix it in the meantime we'll know that that fire hydrant's out of service.

Awesome Tyler, thanks for walking us through this map, man. I love this map so much. I could look at this thing all day.

Talked about how we can use this with stakeholders. So, you know, I could create a JPEG or a screenshot of this. I could dump it into a PowerPoint, you know, with all of these annotation markups. We could go to a pre event planning meeting, to stakeholder coordination meeting.

We put this up in a big screen and we talk about this together. What are some of the features within gNEXT if we want to share it out so we can get a real time model? Is there a URL or a different way that we could do that? And is there any reporting capabilities that instead of having in addition to this real time access, maybe there's some sort of PDF report that we can generate with kind of more granular detail of the model?

Absolutely. And just to put in perspective, that entire scene is a little over thirty million square feet when you add that in. And so Jason, if you go up to I think you said, yep, you can grab that. That's your share link. Very very simple.

Lots of different ways to share this data, and they could be named or not named users.

I I highly recommend, he said, knowing who's there, not sharing credentials, but it's very easy to share this out very quickly. We also have a new functionality that's actually now got a will have a QR code as well to scan for situational awareness across across your team. But probably as as as important, if you go into the to the open up the tab to the left, and if you go under the media tools, yep, and go ahead and take a look at this annotations report.

And you can put your logo, the FIFA logo, whoever I guess they're gonna call this Kansas City Stadium. But anyways, you scroll down through that, any of those edits, annotations, now you've got an x, y, and z of each one of those locations for shareability.

And you can push that out in PDF format. There's also a document management system along just to the to the right of the of the other button, but each one of those is you can dynamically resize each one of the one of those images, you know, so you can tell the story exactly the way you want it in each one of those. And again, I mean, as you can see, Jason's rolling through that very quickly, and and Tyler did a phenomenal job of using these of using these tools, and we're and we're listening to some of these needs and refining some of these. But, again, how is data capture is captured, so you've got great tools for AARs and repeatability of this mission as well.

So if you want to just cancel out of that, Jason, down, and just to the right of the share button, there's also a document management system and we haven't thrown many in there yet, but you can have any type of reports that you may need for anyone that's going to come in there to be able to look at these and sharing any of that environment.

But again, the engineering and analytic tools in the platform are very deep and and constantly being refined to these types of use cases.

Awesome. Well, Bret Tyler, thanks for walking us through that.

Again, just another example. This is what that same site looks like in Google Maps today versus this high value screenshot that you could capture or take from the map capture within the photogrammetry system.

For some next steps before we get into questions. So as we wrap up today, wanna bring us back to the core idea of this entire series. FIFA scale events demand a zero failure mindset, and that doesn't just happen in the moment. It's built well before the first kickoff. In part one of this webinar series, we talked about aligning teams, building ConOps, and preparing for complexity. Today, we focus on something just as critical, understanding the environment with precision.

Because you can just capture the site, but you could also turn it into high fidelity digital model and share that across agencies, you're no longer planning based on assumptions.

You're operating from a common, accurate, and continuously usable source of truth. And what we've shown today, this isn't just the beginning. It's about creating a capacity that carries through from pre event coordination to real time incident response to after action learnings and continuous improvements. One dataset, multiple operational impacts.

For those of you preparing for FIFA and other large scale events, there, the key takeaway is simple. Start now. Start capturing your environments, start building your models, start integrating them into your planning process so that when the event arrives, your teams aren't reacting, they're ready. Here on the screen, you're seeing a few different resources.

So if you scan that QR code, that will link to our awesome three d scan software, which will walk you through step by step all of the capture modes that we talked about in this webinar. In addition, if you have access to Skydio Academy, there is a three d scan for X10 module in Skydio Academy. So if you have a Skydio X10 platform, I would take the online academy, I would take a look at the software manual, and like I said, go out now, start capturing these environments.

I want to thank our panelists for sharing their expertise and real world experience today. Thank you all for taking the time to join us. We do have a few questions, so we'll stick around. I know we have a few minutes left. Look forward to the conversation.

So, Noreen, what do we have for questions on the deck?

Jason, unfortunately, we are over time. Yep.

So we're not gonna get into questions. You guys know how to reach out to us. If you wanna just drop us a note in the Skydio live platform where you registered for this, we'll absolutely get back to you. You'll obviously get a follow-up email from the team once the recording's available as well. So if you need anything, you can reach out.

Really appreciate all of you, captain. Hopefully, you know, I think you are a wealth of knowledge. Hopefully, you're open and willing to a bunch of LinkedIn and or email requests for assistance here because I think a lot of teams are looking for some guidance and how to prepare, maybe not necessarily FIFA, but for some upcoming events down the line.

Absolutely. Tyler, any final thoughts?

No. Feel free to reach out.

You guys can make, my information available to everybody and, be happy to help if anybody's looking for some ideas.

Bret, any final thoughts from you, sir?

No.

Many thanks. You know, reach out. We're happy to get an evaluation account into your hands.

Like I said, Tyler's relatively new to it, but he's already a power user. So your success is our success. So just just let us know, and and we're there to support you.

Alright, everybody. Well, again, appreciate for you joining today. We have many more webinars coming out soon. Keep your eye out for those.

We'll be sending information now about our next series in the FIFA preparedness webinar series for Skydio. Thank you all for joining. Stay safe out there. Fly safe.

Back each other up.

Bye.