UAV in Monitoring and Evaluating Infrastructural Projects: Awareness and Extent of Adoption Study

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), also called a drone, has been gaining attention globally to solve different tasks. This study specifically sought to investigate the current level of awareness and extent of UAV adoption in monitoring and evaluating infrastructural projects. The study used a descriptive, quantitative and qualitative research design methods of investigation, as well as a stratified and random sampling technique to select a sample size from a population of 802 practitioners in the three (3) regions of Nigeria. The data collection and survey instrument included a well-structured questionnaire, semi-structured discussions, personal observations and visits to elicit information from respondents and infrastructural projects. The collected data was presented using frequency distribution in the form of tables, charts via IBM SPSS Statistics version 26.0. While Mean value score was used to analyse the study's main objectives. The study's findings indicate that there is a low level of awareness and extent of UAV adoption in monitoring and evaluating infrastructural projects across Nigeria, given that a moderate and low mean values obtained from the respondents depicting a low level of awareness of UAV adoption in infrastructural project monitoring and evaluation. This study recommends that, there should be concerted effort geared towards ensuring that some level of intense awareness is created towards the adoption of UAV. Effort should made towards ensuing the cost of acquiring UAV are subsidized and made available for industry players to access easilyKeywords: Awareness, Infrastructural projects, Nigeria, Mean value score, Monitoring, Unmanned aerial vehicle.