OPEN SOURCE IMAGE-PROCESSING TOOLS FOR LOW-COST UAV-BASED LANDSLIDE INVESTIGATIONS

Abstract

In recent years, the application of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has become more common and the availability of lightweight digital cameras has enabled UAV-systems to represent affordable and practical remote sensing platforms, allowing flexible and high- resolution remote sensing investigations. In the course of numerous UAV-based remote sensing campaigns significant numbers of airborne photographs of two different landslides have been acquired. These images were used for ortho-mosaic and digital terrain model (DTM) generation, thus allowing for high-resolution landslide monitoring. Several new open source image- and DTM- processing tools are now providing a complete remote sensing working cycle with the use of no commercial hard- or software.