Accuracy of sand beach topography surveying by drones and photogrammetry
Beaches are characterized by high morphodynamic activity, and high-frequency measurements are needed to understand their states and rates of change. Ideally, beach survey methods should be at once accurate, rapid and low-cost. Recently, unmanned aerial systems (drones) have been increasingly utilize...
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Veröffentlicht in: | Geo-marine letters 2020-04, Vol.40 (2), p.255-268 |
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Format: | Artikel |
Sprache: | eng |
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Zusammenfassung: | Beaches are characterized by high morphodynamic activity, and high-frequency measurements are needed to understand their states and rates of change. Ideally, beach survey methods should be at once accurate, rapid and low-cost. Recently, unmanned aerial systems (drones) have been increasingly utilized to measure beach topography. In this paper, we present a review of the state of art in drones and photogrammetry for beach surveys and the respective achieved measurement quality (where reported). We then show how drones with a minimal configuration and a low-cost setup can meet the high accuracy and rapidity required for beach surveys. To test a minimal drone and ground control point configuration, we used consumer-grade equipment to perform the same flight path with different cameras and at different altitudes. We then used photogrammetry to produce digital elevation models of the beach. Using a GNSS-RTK system, we collected 2950 independent control points to evaluate the accuracy of the digital elevation models. Results show that, once a few potential sources of uncertainties in the final digital elevation model are taken into account, the average RMSE(z) of the digital elevation models was ~5 cm, with a survey efficiency of ca. 3 m
2
min
−1
. Digital elevation models taken at different times were used to calculate the before–after sediment budget following a storm that hit a sandy coast in Sylt Island at the German North Sea coast. |
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ISSN: | 0276-0460 1432-1157 |
DOI: | 10.1007/s00367-020-00638-8 |