For cemetery operators · 7 min read
What does it cost to map a cemetery?
Nobody publishes numbers, so here are the things that actually move the price — and the one that moves it most.
Almost nobody publishes prices for this, which makes it hard to know whether a quote is reasonable. We are not going to publish a price list either — the honest answer is that two cemeteries of identical size can differ by a factor of five — but we can tell you exactly what moves the number, so you can read a quote properly and ask the right questions.
The thing that costs the most is not the grounds
People assume acreage drives the price. It mostly does not. Flying and photographing a cemetery is predictable, well-understood work; a large site takes longer than a small one in a fairly linear way.
The records are what move the number. A cemetery with 4,000 interments in a clean database is cheaper to bring online than a cemetery with 1,200 interments recorded in three ledgers, a card file, and a spreadsheet that disagrees with both. Working out who is where, and which source to believe when they conflict, is the half that varies most.
Capture is the more predictable half — but predictable is not the same as fast, and it is not purely a function of acreage. A 50-acre cemetery is typically three to five days on site, and a busy one with services running can be considerably more.
The question to ask any vendor first
"What happens when your records and our records disagree?" A vendor who has done this before will have an immediate, specific answer. A vendor who has not will tell you it will not happen.
What actually goes into the price
Capture
Aerial imagery, ground-level 360° imagery, or both. Aerial gives you layout and lets you see every marker from above. Ground-level gives a family the experience of standing there. Aerial alone is cheaper; most cemeteries that have both find the ground-level imagery is what families actually respond to.
Positional accuracy
This is where quotes diverge quietly. Consumer-grade drone GPS gets you to within a few metres. Survey-grade equipment with ground control points gets you to centimetres and costs considerably more.
For helping a family find a grave, a few metres is fine — they can see the marker once they are in the right row. Centimetre accuracy matters if you intend to use the map to identify and sell unsold ground, where the difference between "roughly there" and "exactly there" is a legal one.
Records work
Transcription if the records are on paper, reconciliation if they exist in several places, and cleanup regardless. This is the variable cost, and any quote that does not break it out separately is hiding something.
Tying records to positions
Making "Section C, Block 4, Lot 12" correspond to a place on the image. If your sections are clearly marked on the ground and your numbering is consistent, this is quick. If Section C was renumbered in 1978 and nobody wrote down how, it is not.
Hosting and support
Recurring, and usually modest. But ask what happens to it in year five, and ask whether the price is per interment — per-record pricing gets uncomfortable as you keep burying people.
One-off versus recurring
Insist that any proposal separates these, because vendors compare badly otherwise. A low capture cost with high per-record hosting can easily cost more over five years than the opposite.
| Cost | Type | Varies with |
|---|---|---|
| Aerial capture | One-off | Acreage, flight restrictions |
| Ground 360° capture | One-off | Acreage, number of sections |
| Records transcription | One-off | Format and legibility |
| Records reconciliation | One-off | How many sources conflict |
| Positional accuracy | One-off | Survey grade or not |
| Hosting | Recurring | Sometimes record count |
| New interments | Recurring | Your burial rate |
| Re-capture | Occasional | How fast the grounds change |
Things that raise the price more than people expect
- How busy you are. The one nobody quotes for. A working cemetery has families at gravesides, burials, and services all day, and none of them get flown over. On a busy site a one-day projection is realistically two or three, because the crew stops and waits every time. Ask any vendor how they handle this — if they have not thought about it, they will discover it on your grounds at your expense.
- Topography. Flat open lawn scans quickly. Hillsides, terraces, and ravines need more passes at more angles.
- Airspace restrictions. A cemetery under a controlled approach path needs authorisation to fly, and sometimes a different method entirely.
- Mature tree cover. Beautiful, and it hides markers from the air. Heavily treed sections often need ground capture that open lawn does not.
- Flat markers under grass. Ones that have sunk or grown over do not photograph, and finding them is manual work.
- Multiple numbering systems. Cemeteries that expanded or merged often carry two or three schemes at once.
- Unmarked graves. Common in older and potter's-field sections. They exist in the ledger and not on the ground, and deciding how to represent them is a real conversation.
Things that lower it
- Records already in one system, even an imperfect one
- Section markers physically present and legible on the ground
- An accurate existing section map, even hand-drawn
- Someone on staff who knows the grounds and can answer questions
- Flexibility on capture date — good light and dormant grass help
How to compare two quotes fairly
- Make both separate one-off from recurring
- Ask both what positional accuracy they are quoting, in metres
- Ask both what happens to your data if you leave — and get the export format in writing
- Ask both who approves a correction submitted by a family
- Ask both for a reference cemetery of similar size and records quality, and then actually call them
The fifth one is the most useful and the least used. A vendor who has done this properly will hand you a phone number without hesitating.
Sources
Where the claims above come from. Anything based on our own work rather than a published source is labelled as such.
- Federal Aviation Administration, Part 107 Airspace Authorizations — why a cemetery under controlled airspace costs more to fly.
https://www.faa.gov/uas/commercial_operators/part_107_airspace_authorizations - Federal Aviation Administration, UAS Data Exchange (LAANC) — the near-real-time authorisation route, available at 726 airports.
https://www.faa.gov/uas/getting_started/laanc - Cost ranges reflect our own project experience rather than a published industry survey; no reliable public pricing data exists for this work.