By the end of the year, it is estimated that there will be about 600,000 commercial drones operating in the United States. U.S. Transportation Secretary, Anthony Foxx says, “We are in one of the most dramatic periods of change in the history of transportation.” From agricultural to infrastructural surveying to package delivery and even firefighter drones, drone use is on the rise. But the new question that the drone industry is asking is, how do we make money using commercial drones’ data? Consider this: on average, a drone captures ten megabyte still frame images or video each second during a flight. That is a lot of raw data. Most of the time, these megabytes of data are processed using photogrammetry (i.e. the use of photography in surveying and mapping to measure distances between objects) applications or the individual pixels are analyzed to find patterns or anomalies. Monetization of that data occurs once the captured raw data is processed into a finished data product. Only at that point can the expense of commercial drone operations and their flights generate revenue. DroneData, a Texas-based drone application company, is working on figuring out that number. For now, drone flights will continue to increase along with the vast amount of new data we will collect from each of those flights.

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