Case Study: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police achieve accurate collision and crime scene reconstruction with Pix4D drones

Collision and crime scene investigation with drones

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) needed a faster, reliable way to document collisions and crime scenes and compare drone-based surveying against traditional methods like tape measurements and laser scanning. Using Pix4Dmapper with drones, the RCMP tested whether aerial mapping could capture scene details accurately enough for forensic reconstruction and evidence use.

Pix4D enabled the RCMP to collect two drone data sets of a mock crime scene, process them into a densified point cloud, DSM, and orthomosaic, and make measurements directly in the software. The results matched traditional methods or were within 1 cm accuracy, while the full flight took less than 30 minutes and processing took about two hours on a laptop, showing that Pix4D can deliver fast, highly accurate, and cost-effective scene reconstruction.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police