Precise monitoring of temporal topographic change detection via unmanned air vehicle

Abstract

Nowadays, fast developing space-borne and airborne remote sensing technologies became indispensable for land related engineering disciplines such as mapping, geology, environment, mining and forestry. The new technologies, provide more qualified and rapid achievable outcomes, are adopted permanently. The description of the topographic surface became easier by means of very high resolution (VHR), rapid achievable and accurate point clouds acquired by digital photogrammetry and airborne laser scanning (ALS). Optical unmanned air vehicle (UAV), one of the most actual photogrammetric techniques, is much in demand for varied purposes. UAVs provide high resolution data using the advantage of lower flight altitudes. In this study, a construction activity and its environmental influences in Bulent Ecevit University Central Campus were monitored by an optical hand-made UAV. In the application, the temporal change was detected by generating contour-lines, digital terrain models (DTMs) and differential DTMs (DiffDTM) of the topography. By DiffDTMs, temporal changes on the topography were visualized in color height scale where the contour-lines presents the change of morphological structure.