COMBINING UNMANNED AERIAL SYSTEMS AND STRUCTURE FROM MOTION PHOTOGRAMMETRY TO RECONSTRUCT THE GEOMETRY OF GROINS

Abstract

In the context of coastal environment, the combined use of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) with Structure-from-Motion (SfM) photogrammetry has been demonstrated to be a suitable tool to collect accurate geoinformation. This work aims at investigating the effectiveness of UAS survey to accurately map the geometry of rouble mound groins for monitoring the structural integrity. A set of nadiral images was processed through SfM photogrammetry to obtain the Digital Surface Model (DSM) of the groin. The DSM accuracy was evaluated through the comparison of five profiles measured by the traditional GNSS technique. Overall, vertical accuracy returned a root mean square error of 2.6 cm. The results suggest that UAS combined with SfM photogrammetry can improve the current monitoring of coastal engineering structures by providing high accurate geospatial products.