How Stitch3D Expedited Real-Time Disaster Response
A mixed drone lidar and photogrammetry workflow was deployed during the 2025 Wolf Fire response in Denare Beach, Saskatchewan, to map approximately 200 acres across multiple affected zones for damage assessment, earthworks planning, and recovery support. The project became a real-world demonstration of how modern reality-capture technologies can operate in unstable, time-critical environments.
By Casey Pryor, Basemap Consulting | Case Study | Drone LiDAR | Disaster Response
My eyes snapped open after a few hours of sleep, and for a second, I had no idea where I was. Then it all came back at once — the Wolf Fire, the current state of Denare Beach, Saskatchewan, and the 200 acres of scarred ground we had to map over the next few days.
Basemap Consulting was contracted in 2025 by Thompson Consulting Services to collect approximately 200 acres of drone-based aerial LiDAR and photogrammetry data across five areas of interest in Denare Beach, post-Wolf Wildfire. The scope was clear: update site maps, monitor disaster relief progress, and collect LiDAR to support dirt work volume calculations and topographic analysis. What was less clear — until we arrived — was exactly what we were walking into.
Getting There
The travel alone nearly derailed the project.
Three connecting flights from Daytona Beach. Saskatoon baggage claim. No bag. That bag contained all my personal gear and an Emlid Reach RS2+. At the same time, collaborator Dean Ford was driving six hours from Calgary when he struck a pronghorn deer and had to be towed two hours in the wrong direction to swap vehicles. By the time we regrouped it was 9 p.m. We drove north for what seemed like forever on pitch-black dirt and gravel roads. We rolled into Denare Beach at 3 a.m., circumventing the disaster area and heading straight to our fishing camp.
A few hours later, the sun came up. And the reality of what the Wolf Fire had done came with it.
The fire had essentially cut the town in half. The north side was mostly untouched. The south side was gone — approximately 200 homes destroyed, entire blocks reduced to foundations. Walking the affected areas, the outside world fades away. You see the disaster on a granular level. Homeowners returning for the first time. People unhoused. Communities pulling together. It’s humbling in a way that reminds you your whole world could change in an instant.
No Infrastructure. No RTK. No Problem.
There was no favorable positioning infrastructure waiting for us. No RTK network, no CORS stations, and — thanks to the missing bag — a single rover to work with.
Dean and I set ground control targets manually across all five areas of interest. We laid the control first so we could get flying, then positioned a base to log static data for PPK processing. Each night, alarms went off every four hours to rotate observations across control points — stop logging, pick up the base, move to the next point, start logging, set the alarm, repeat.
Day 1: control set. Half of the smart oblique photogrammetry and LiDAR acreage complete.
Day 2: back on the base point, finished both collection methods. We flew in constant communication with the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency Fire Station, who were conducting helicopter reconnaissance and aerial firefighting missions throughout the day. They were a pleasure to work with and gave us a tour of their facilities before we departed.
By the third morning, all of the data was back to our Georgia office.
Where Stitch3D Changed the Operation
In a project full of constraints — no connectivity, no RTK, fragmented sleep, improvised workflows — Stitch3D became the one thing that worked exactly as it needed to.
Each night, as the 4-hour alarms ticked through control point rotations, the team was simultaneously pre-processing data and uploading it directly to Stitch3D using intermittent Starlink connections. The platform provided immediate visualization and quality checks, confirming coverage, identifying gaps, and pushing finalized datasets back to the Georgia office the same night the flights were flown.
What would traditionally require weeks of back-and-forth processing and verification was compressed into days.
The final deliverables were shared with Thompson Consulting Services via a single Stitch3D link containing both the raster and vector data in one project. Thompson immediately began extracting volumetric data from the T&D dump/borrow pit and the voids left by basement foundations on cleared properties. The analysis defined exact fill volumes for each property, prevented over-excavation at the borrow pit, and allowed truckloads and labor hours to be planned with precision.
A few days of remote sensing turned uncertainty into a tangible understanding of the site, translating chaos into something measurable and actionable.
The Why
I shared the travel issues to show what these operations actually look like in real life. In remote environments, things go wrong. Equipment gets lost. Sleep becomes optional. Tertiary workflows get used. But it is all worth it to deliver critical data where it matters most.
As remote sensing continues to integrate into disaster response, rebuilding timelines shrink and people get back into their homes faster and safer. That is our why.
Thanks to Thompson Consulting Services, Stitch3D, Emlid, RESEPI, and DJI for supporting this project. A special thanks to Dean Ford for making this project tangible and lending his skill set to capturing and documenting Denare Beach. And to the residents of Denare Beach — we are thankful for your support while on site and wish a speedy recovery of your beautiful town.
Casey Pryor is a field lead and vice president at Basemap Consulting, an aerial mapping and LiDAR services firm operating across North America. Learn more at basemapconsulting.com. Stitch3D is a browser-based platform for sharing and visualizing 3D geospatial and LiDAR data. Learn more at stitch3d.io.
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