Drone ‘mosaic’ helps catch erosion

A driver who led police on a pursuit through suburban Blenheim during lockdown has admitted drink-driving home from the hospital.

Grant Craig Macmorland, 25, had been drinking at home on the evening of April 16 when he accidentally cut himself, and decided to drive to the emergency department at Wairau Hospital in Blenheim. Hospital staff treated and discharged Macmorland, but was concerned he was going to drive home and called police, a summary of facts said.

Police spotted Macmorland driving on Maxwell Rd about 11.45pm, and indicated for him to pull over with flashing lights, but Macmorland instead sped away, reaching up to 90kmh in an area with a speed limit of 50kmh.

He turned onto Eltham Rd and tried to hide by parking in a driveway, but was spotted by a sergeant who approached the car. Macmorland then got out of the car and was arrested. He gave a breath test result of 900 micrograms of alcohol per litre of breath. The legal limit is 250mcg. His vehicle was impounded and his licence was suspended.

He admitted drink-driving for the third or subsequent time and failing to stop for police when he appeared at the Blenheim District Court on Monday. It was the second time within 12 months he had failed to pull over for police. His lawyer John Holdaway said Macmorland could be eligible for an alcohol interlock licence. He was on a zero-alcohol licence at the time of the offending.

Judge Richard Russell convicted Macmorland and ordered an alcohol and drug report, and a pre-sentencing report to assess options including an ankle bracelet. He remanded Macmorland on bail to August 10 for sentencing, with conditions not to drink alcohol or drive.

A drone ‘‘mosaic’’ of harvested forestry blocks is letting Marlburians see the wood for the trees, and could cut down environmental issues.

Marlborough company Geoinsight Limited is using drones, 360-degree cameras and an e-bike to ‘‘stitch together’’ images of forestry blocks and help the Marlborough District Council streamline compliance checks.

Of the council’s 17 monitoring programmes, forestry is ranked the highest, due to its potential for adverse environmental impacts like land instability, erosion, and driving out native plants and animals.

Geoinsight co-founder Mark Spencer said the same issues cropped up ‘‘time and time again’’ during his decade-long stint as an environment officer at the council, so he teamed up with fellow co-founder and former council business analyst Rob Besaans to create Remotehq.

The pair spent three years developing the software while on independent compliance checks for the council, designing it to be used in the six years post-harvest, when blocks were vulnerable to weather.

‘‘What typically happens is a company comes in, takes all the trees off [a block] and says, ‘See you later landowner. Good luck with that.’

‘‘The block will sit idle during that ‘window of vulnerability’ period and landowners just really hope that no big weather events come through. If there is, a lot of the time . . . they tend not to do a lot of maintenance.

‘‘It’s important that pressure is put on either the landowner or the company to maintain what they put in place, otherwise we get erosion.’’

The software would help make compliance ‘‘proactive, rather than reactive’’, he said.

The pair would send up a drone to photograph the forestry block, with images ‘‘stitched together’’ to create a highdefinition mosaic. Shots were also taken on foot, and an e-bike was used to get around forestry blocks and move equipment.

Spencer said the technology allowed compliance officers to spot issues that weren’t visible on foot.

He recalled a drone spotting ‘‘cracks’’ on a hillside, which could have triggered a compliance failure if wet weather had dumped forestry materials into the stream below.

After identifying spots that were a compliance failure, concern or excellent, the pair broadcast the results online on the Remotehq website.

A council compliance officer could then use the software to point out problems to forest managers and landowners, aimed at stopping environmental issues before they occurred.

Geoinsight’s fees were paid by landowners, not ratepayers, Spencer said.

Besaans described the software as a ‘‘radically new approach’’ to environmental management, one underpinned by public transparency.

‘‘We set up Geoinsight ... to eliminate erosion and sedimentation across New Zealand, starting with the Marlborough region,’’ he said.

The pair’s long-term goal was to see Remotehq used by other regional councils.

Councillor Gerald Hope, who held the environment protection and compliance portfolio in Marlborough, said the software was ‘‘forward-looking’’.

‘‘It’s great for monitoring and compliance. It’s also very good for the [forestry] industry at large to measure their success or failure.’’

Councillor David Oddie supported the software at a council meeting, saying it was ‘‘positive’’ work.