When unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) support the Corps of Engineers in reconnaissance operations, in order to gather visible image information that should meet the mission's need, we grouped the engineering reconnaissance information interpretation tasks into 10 levels by using the National Imagery Interpretability Rating Scale (NIIRS). The quantitative relationship between the engineering targets, sensor performance, and flight altitude was established through the general image quality

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... (GIQE) and the geometrical property of the ground sampled distance (GSD). Through some simulations, the influence of variable factors of the EO sensor imaging quality was analyzed, and the imaging height of the sensor for an engineering reconnaissance scenario was calculated. The results showed that this study could solve the problem of poor image quality caused by the flight altitude not meeting the mission requirements.