I was reading today about how DroneBase has partnered with FLIR Systems to offer infrared and thermal imaging missions. FLIR actually invested in DroneBase. For those of you who aren't familiar with DroneBase, they operate the largest drone network in the world and have a wide variety of services geared toward the real estate industry.

This news is noteworthy because infrared thermography cameras allow you to see and measure the thermal energy emitted from objects -- such as buildings. For the real estate industry, or even for individual homeowners, it would allow you to quickly visualize things like leakiness (lack of air tightness), water damage, and so on.

These kinds of scans already exist, but putting thermal sensors on drones has the potential to make this technology much more scalable and cost effective. I am sure we will be seeing more of this. And when we do, I bet we'll discover that many buildings don't actually perform all that well from an energy standpoint.

Photo by Goh Rhy Yan on Unsplash