Acta Geodaetica et Cartographica Sinica ›› 2026, Vol. 55 ›› Issue (6): 975-989.doi: 10.11947/j.AGCS.2026.20250525

• Empowering Low-altitude Economy with Intelligent Geospatial Surveying • Previous Articles    

Geospatial information empowering the low-altitude economy: key technological breakthroughs and industrial development

Qinghua GUO1(), Zekun YANG1, Zhiyong QI1, Yixuan ZHANG1, Zhixin CHENG1, Kang LIU1,2, Kai CHENG1, Ang CHEN1, Luyi YANG3   

  1. 1.Institute of Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
    2.College of Civil Engineering, Wuhan City Polytechnic, Wuhan 430064, China
    3.Beijing GreenValley Technology Co., Ltd., Beijing 100093, China
  • Received:2025-12-16 Revised:2026-06-05 Published:2026-07-28
  • About author:GUO Qinghua (1973—), male, PhD, professor, majors in LiDAR remote sensing. E-mail: guo.qinghua@pku.edu.cn
  • Supported by:
    The National Key Research and Development Program of China(2022YFB3903303);The National Natural Science Foundation of China(42530503)

Abstract:

Low-altitude economic operations require machine systems to achieve autonomous perception, planning, and management of low-altitude airspace, with the fundamental prerequisite that the physical low-altitude environment must first be transformed into a machine-processable digital form. The computabilization of the low-altitude environment is essentially a geospatial problem, and geospatial surveying and mapping technology is the core discipline for transforming physical geographic space into digital computable form. In this process, geospatial surveying and mapping technology constitutes an irreplaceable foundation for the computabilization of the low-altitude economy across three dimensions: the dynamic robust estimation capability of positioning technology supports real-time autonomous navigation of UAVs in complex unstructured environments; the geometric-topological dual representation capability of GIS supports the structural transformation of low-altitude airspace from a static digital foundation to a dynamically plannable route network; and the semantic understanding and information extraction capability of remote sensing supports the decision-level transformation of the flight environment from geometric description to risk quantification. This paper systematically reviews the supporting mechanisms and technical boundaries of geospatial technologies across the full value chain of the low-altitude economy along four layers—spatial cognition, airspace utilization, flight execution, and airspace management—analyzes their stratified contributions at each stage of the upstream, midstream, and downstream industrial chain, and verifies the engineering feasibility and application boundaries of relevant technical solutions through typical cases of low-altitude inspection and logistics. This paper proposes for the first time a four-layer technical framework for achieving the computabilization of the low-altitude economy from a geospatial perspective, reveals the irreplaceable supporting role of geospatial information in the low-altitude economy, and provides a systematic reference for theoretical research on the low-altitude economy and the interdisciplinary development of the geospatial discipline.

Key words: low-altitude economy, technological innovation, low-altitude industry, low-altitude inspection, low-altitude logistics, surveying and mapping geographic information

CLC Number: