High-quality storage solutions for Dutch Drone Company

When you think of risk assessment, you don't initially think of drones. To find out how those unmanned aerial vehicles are behind Dutch Drone Company, let's go back to its founding story in 2014. “We became one of the first certified drone operators in the Netherlands in 2014. Pretty soon we saw that there was so much potential in the inspection market with drones. Not so much to make promo films for companies, but to make inspection work easier. Especially in the petrochemical industry there appeared to be a lot of demand for it.” The parties that approached Dutch Drone Company for their projects were by no means the least. Among others, multinational Shell and Rijkswaterstaat asked for the Rotterdam-based company's services.

“Now you collect data on your own”

Dutch Drone Company mainly takes on projects that take place in the industrial sector. Think of support in the construction of factories and terminals on behalf of contractors and engineering firms, or inspection in infrastructure such as bridges. The added value of having inspections done by drones seems only practical in nature, but it soon turns out to be efficient and cost-saving. The fact that traffic does not have to stop when it is necessary to inspect a bridge is just an added bonus.

The drone is used as a tool to collect data with a thermal or high-resolution RGB camera. During inspection, a huge amount of photos are taken and they are computed together by computer-controlled software. The result is an impressively complete and interactive 3D model. “You want to be able to retrieve specific spots in a structured way,” he says. Using a virtual reconstruction of a bridge, Feye shows what he means by that. “If I say, okay I want to see from this spot what the photos taken look like, I select that. Then you see all the high-resolution photos taken at that point of that particular spot.” That way, an expert can perform an inspection and make a judgment as if you were actually there. This is where the fracture is and that requires a note so it can be repaired.” Such a 3D model acts as a so-called digital twin, making it almost indistinguishable from reality.

That huge amount of photos is also a retroactive advantage. Because each photo has a location, you can retrace exactly where a crack is, for example. Or picture the scenario where you want to place a scaffolding somewhere, you can measure and see exactly where it should be, based on the photos. In short, it saves a lot of time and manpower. Feye concludes, “Now you collect data on your own, instead of someone having to climb up there.” Someone who is good at climbing, say, a bridge, again has limited knowledge to assess whether there are defects. With this method, you can perform that evaluation remotely.

The need for secure storage

According to IBM, data volumes worldwide are doubling every 18 to 24 months. So storing and processing that huge amount of data safely is becoming increasingly important, including for Dutch Drone Company. By cooperating with Worldstream, it was possible to store those large data sets. There it is safe and secure, underlined by the international information security standard ISO/IEC 27001:2013.

Certifications, that's something enterprises assume you already have, according to Feye. They want to know that the data stored at Worldstream is truly secure. That interest often comes in the form of all kinds of questions: “They simply have higher requirements. How is it stored? What if there is a data breach, what do you do then? Those kinds of questions. You'll need to be prepared and have a provider that can answer those questions and has more experience with that.”

In addition to ISO certification for information security, the data centers are surrounded by electric fences, the premises are monitored 24/7 and access is controlled by biometric scans. Furthermore, Worldstream uses 100% renewable energy in its data centers, sourced from Dutch wind energy. Worldstream also has certifications for environmental management (ISO 14001:2015) and secure processing of payment card data (PCI-DSS).

Data processing at Dutch Drone Company on large projects used to go In the cloud. To process data in the cloud comes with a high price tag. “In some projects, this sometimes meant €60,000 in licensing costs. And then you only have access to the cloud for 3 months to process everything. To improve this process and make it more efficient, we built our own system to process a lot of data quickly. With our system we can now process at lower cost and also deliver better quality because we can adjust the data during the process when needed. Ultimately, we can deliver better results to our clients with this methodology and also at a lower cost.

Dutch Drone Company had been familiar with Worldstream for a while, but it wasn't until 2020 that they started talking on a professional level. “After all, we have to secure data and backups for our clients of all projects. Big companies sometimes even demand that you keep the data for about 15 years. In that respect Worldstream is a very suitable partner.” The quality of the Worldstream network also stood out. “The uploading and downloading of data is above average at Worldstream, though. That is very important to us. We have large data sets, but they must also be quickly retrievable. Especially if you want to start processing the data, it shouldn't be stored in cold storage somewhere.”

There is a reason that the data needs to be quickly callable, ultimately people want the dataset as soon as possible to be able to work with the results. Sometimes a customer asks, “You have all the data, so can you download this and resend it to us?” That often happens in a final phase of a project when they need something fast and Dutch Drone Company needs to be on standby for that. “That has happened a few times,” he said.

Dutch Drone Company's future flights

Dutch Drone Company is not only active within the Netherlands. Meanwhile, for example, they are active with a license in the UK, as a number of offshore projects are underway there. “In Germany and Norway we have also done a number of different projects and they have even sent teams to Brazil and Vietnam for various projects and in 2023 several teams have been active in Qatar for 1.5 months. There's even an application going on now in Australia for a big project.” These are all kinds of diverse projects; in Suriname, for example, they have been asked to inspect a network of high-voltage pylons.

To support that variety of projects, Dutch Drone Company wants to increase its team in the form of more drone pilots. “For us it was especially nice in working with Worldstream that we could quickly scale up and scale down as needed. So if we needed more storage, an email or phone call to Worldstream was all we needed.”

Whether data storage will still be important in the future, Feye de Zwart has no doubts. “Look, data is getting bigger and heavier. In our case clients want higher resolution images and projects are getting bigger and bigger. Where a few years ago we used a 20 megapixel camera, today it's a 100 megapixel camera.”

In terms of technology, the drone company also sees all kinds of possibilities in the future. “The expectation is that with AI in the future you can have data automatically recognized and keyed in real time. Then again, stronger computers will be needed to facilitate that. Our projects are getting bigger and bigger, which also just requires us to grow with them.” For that reason, Dutch Drone Company hopes to build on Worldstream in the area of data storage for years to come.