How Southern California Edison is using drones and LiDAR to monitor coastal fissures with precision.
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On the bluffs of the California coast, the ground tells its own story. For more than a year, Southern California Edison (SCE) has been monitoring ground fissures that slowly advance along the bluffs; a steady reminder of the region's unsteady land, resulting from a major ongoing landslide. Helicopters have long been used to survey the area, providing wide coverage and reliable LiDAR data from the air.
Now, with the land’s motion slowing, drones are being added into the workflow, offering the ability to fly closer to the slope and capture a higher-resolution dataset.
On a clear morning, SCE’s operations team rolled out the Inspired Flight IF1200 drone, a heavy-lift aircraft built to carry advanced payloads. For this mission, the Teledyne CLS-A LiDAR system was mounted, weighing in at 9.7 pounds. The drone completed three flights, each lasting around 25 minutes, flying steady terrain-following paths 300 feet above the slope at approximately 8 meters per second.
The flights mapped just under 60 acres in total, providing a comprehensive view of the area.
For Art Torres, pilot in command, the assignment meant balancing payload weight, battery life, and precision.
“It’s a heavy sensor, but the aircraft handled it well. Battery management was the key—we had to plan carefully to maximize each flight.”
A snapshot of the ground fissure monitoring mission
While Torres focused on the skies, Dr. Ken Hudnut, a seismic expert with SCE, kept his attention on the ground. For him, the drone’s work is more than flight; it’s a window into movement invisible to the naked eye.
“The LiDAR lets us see centimeter-level movement across the whole area,” Hudnut explains. “That’s the kind of resolution we need to inform safety decisions.”
Each scan builds on the last, layering new information onto a year’s worth of data, creating a clearer record of how the ground is changing over time.
For Dr. Hudnut, these flights are more than just data collection. They represent progress in how utilities can adapt to changing landscapes.
“This is part of building a long-term resilience strategy. The better we understand how this land is moving, the better prepared we’ll be.”
And for Torres, the experience marks a turning point in capability.
“Having this capability in-house means we can keep flying it, keep learning, and keep improving our response.”
The recent flights marked the conclusion of a trial effort using the Inspired Flight IF1200 drone equipped with a Teledyne CLS-A LiDAR to monitor the coastal ground fissures. Over the course of the day, three successful flights collected detailed data at a consistent 300-foot altitude, steady 8 m/s airspeed, and full coverage of nearly 60 acres.
The data collected adds a new layer to ongoing monitoring of the area, complementing previous helicopter surveys and broadening the toolkit available for tracking ground movement. The mission demonstrated how aerial platforms can be matched with the right payload to capture precise datasets that strengthen long-term resilience strategies. This information is already supporting safety planning in the area, including decisions about where to set utility poles, position large utility trucks, and protect field crews working near the fissures.