UAV monitoring and documentation of a large landslide

摘要

In June 2013, heavy precipitation triggered a large earthflow of several million cubic meters in a small village in Austria. A bundle of technologies was applied to monitor and document the landslide, such as geophysical methods (geoelectrics, inclinometer, soil moisture, and soil temperature) and Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) measurements. Additionally, an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) was used for the periodical assessment of the landslide process. In total, nine flights were performed with amulticopter equipped with a digital single-lens reflex camera (DSLR) that delivered several thousands of images. Based on these images and detailed GNSS measurements of the landslide area, orthophotos as well as generated Digital Surface Models (DSMs) with an accuracy of less than ±10 cm resulted. Fissure tracking, flow direction and velocity, and mass balances as well as the construction progress of the protection and mitigation measures were derived from these data sets. The application of the UAV turned out to be a cost- and time-effective tool for landslide-monitoring that provides researchers and engineers with accurate high-resolution geodata.