Post-Fire Slope Monitoring for a Palisades Hillside Rebuild
A hillside parcel above a moderate-to-high burn-severity slope in the Pacific Palisades corridor was cleared for reconstruction. Before design could proceed, the owner and their general contractor needed an answer to a question that a standard drone flight can't legally settle: is the slope stable enough to build on, and can that answer be stamped?
The challenge
Post-fire slopes lose the vegetation and root structure that hold soil in place. Through the first winter after a burn, even moderate rainfall can trigger measurable ground movement and debris flow. For a rebuild, that creates three problems at once:
- Design risk — grading and foundation plans need current, accurate ground truth, not pre-fire county topography.
- Permit risk — City of LA hillside parcels trigger engineered grading under LAMC §91.7004, which requires a licensed engineer's analysis, not raw survey data.
- Schedule risk — waiting for a traditional ground crew during an active rebuild season can cost weeks the construction calendar doesn't have.
The owner had already been quoted by a drone operator who could capture imagery but could not certify anything from it — leaving a gap between the data and a permit-ready deliverable.
The approach
Pacific Intelligence flies, processes, and stamps under one roof, so the same team that captured the terrain was accountable for the engineering conclusion.
- Baseline flight. An FAA Part 107 mission under LAANC authorization captured a survey-grade LiDAR point cloud of the full parcel and the slope above it, tied to ground control for 1–3 cm accuracy.
- Bare-earth model. The point cloud was processed into a bare-earth digital terrain model and 1-foot contours — the surface the grading and drainage design would be built on.
- Change-detection loop. The baseline established, scheduled and storm-triggered re-flights were co-registered against it and differenced to quantify any displacement through the wet season.
- Stamped report. A licensed California civil engineer interpreted the movement analysis and issued a sealed slope-stability and engineered-grading report that dropped straight into the LADBS package.
The deliverables
- Survey-grade bare-earth DTM and contour set of the parcel and uphill slope
- Cut-and-fill volumetrics for the grading plan
- Change-detection surfaces comparing baseline to post-storm epochs
- An engineer-stamped slope-stability report sized for the §91.7004 submittal
The outcome
The rebuild team walked into plan check with current, defensible ground truth and a stamped analysis from a single accountable provider — no stitching together a drone vendor and a separate engineer, and no re-verification between the field data and the certified conclusion. The change-detection program continued through storm season, so the owner had engineer-reviewed answers on slope movement rather than guesses, on a schedule that kept construction moving.
The value of a drone-native civil engineering firm on a post-fire hillside isn't the flight — it's that the people flying the site are the same ones licensed to tell you what it means and put a seal on it.
Representative project. This case study illustrates Pacific Intelligence's typical scope, workflow, and deliverables for post-fire hillside slope monitoring in the Malibu–Pacific Palisades corridor; details are composite and do not identify a specific client. Figures reflect the firm's standard capabilities, not a guaranteed outcome. A verified client engagement will replace this example once available.