The province of KwaZulu Natal in South Africa sustained heavy losses of life and destruction to property in infrastructure, following days of heavy rainfall in the area in April this year.

Now, a drone-based inspection and digitisation company will be flying its drones and applying related inspection technology to map out and give an accurate assessment of the actual scale of damage left by the floods.

DeltaScan – the company contracted to carry out the inspection – will check the structural damage visited around the provincial capital of Durban, which suffered the heaviest impact, along with surrounding areas in the province.

“We are back on site with one of the most extensive infrastructure mapping investigations over the last few years,” DeltaScan said in their announcement.

“The devastation of the floods in KZN has only been publicised through the media in isolated events. The full scale of damages has affected critical routes and services over hundreds of kilometres.”

In the aftermath of the sub-tropical depression Issa national disaster, government put the final death toll at 435 people, which included five people were killed in a high-density township near Clare Estate; a mother and three children killed in Tongaat when their car was swept away by a swollen river and two people who died when their home collapsed on them in Verulam.

Thousands of people were left homeless after about 13,500 houses sustained various states damage, with early government estimates putting the total damage to roads to a total of about R5,7billion. Operations at the port of Durban had to be suspended for days following the destruction of roads leading to the port; shipping was also affected as freight companies was asked to send their cargo vessels to other destinations.

“We are privileged to have been appointed as the lead inspection team to digitise and investigate and quantify the damages caused over this multi-week operation. Using drone LiDAR, precision full-frame photogrammetry cameras together with manned aircraft, this will be an inspection of epic proportions.”

DeltaScan is a specialist inspection and digitisation company founded by a team of professionals in the civil engineering and GIS space. Their solutions combine cutting edge drone and scanning technology together with 3D digitisation and engineering design principles.

“DeltaScan has been assisting asset owners, engineering companies, industrial sites, petrochemical and mines, throughout the world by introducing technological driven workflows using Digital Tools in combination with Artificial Intelligence and Precision Analytics. Our aim is to empower engineers with better tools to speed up their workflows and get more value out of their operations.”

The company has been really busy of late, working with Mzansi Aero Technologies to fight crime and improve service delivery n the high-density settlement of Alexandra in Johannesburg; as well as carrying out a detailed engineering facade audit for a group of buildings in Cape Town.