Unexploded ordnance from the Second World War still surfaces on Dutch and German construction sites, and detecting it is a discipline where positioning is not a nice-to-have but the core of the work. A detection survey is only worth what its coordinates are worth: the report tells an excavator crew where it is safe to dig and where it very much is not.
How UXO detection surveying works
Detection specialists sweep an area with magnetometers or other sensors, and every anomaly they find becomes a point that must be documented, approached and eventually cleared. A UNI-GR2 on the pole gives each of those points a centimetre-accurate RTK position.
The same receiver positions the survey itself: the boundaries of the searched area, the tracks that were covered, the depth references. When the report says an area is cleared, the coordinates in that report prove exactly which area that is.
Because the data syncs to UNI-Cloud, the office builds the reporting while the field team is still on site, and the client’s GIS receives georeferenced results, ready to use.
Who already works this way
AVG detecta UXO con la ayuda de marXact y NieuwlandGeo: detection expertise, the WebGIS field platform of NieuwlandGeo and centimetre-accurate positioning combined in one workflow. That case dates from 2021, when AVG worked with our earlier UNI-GR1 receiver. It is the kind of work our equipment was built for, which is why explosive disposal is one of the disciplines named on the UNI-Collect product page, right next to events and mussel farmers.
A concrete example
A detection company investigates a future building plot flagged as suspect. The team measures the search grid, sweeps it, and records every anomaly with its exact position and depth estimate. The approach plan sends the excavator to measured points, each find is documented where it lay, and the clearance certificate maps precisely onto the plot. Years later, when the neighbouring plot is developed, the archived coordinates still say exactly what was searched and what was found.
Para empezar
You need a receiver, app, cloud environment and RTK corrections, together in el paquete de encuestas UNI-Collect. It works with our own UNI-Collect app or connected to the field platform your organisation already uses.
Questions about positioning in detection work? Contact us, we know the discipline.