Due to the severe green-house effect and abnormal weather, natural disasters like typhoons and torrential rainfall have occurred each year, and their damages have grown bigger. A timely and quick acquisition of damage-related information and observati...
Due to the severe green-house effect and abnormal weather, natural disasters like typhoons and torrential rainfall have occurred each year, and their damages have grown bigger. A timely and quick acquisition of damage-related information and observation techniques is needed to cope with such disasters and establish effective solutions and schemes.
Recently, the spatial imagery information from GIS become a matter of extreme significance, with the development of various sensors to acquire topographical information and the improvement of computing-techniques to make them capable of dealing with mass spatial data. In addition, extensive studies continue to be conducted on application fields of spatial imagery acquired from various platforms: the unmanned helicopter, the model plane, and the airship.
A low-altitude photogrammetric system has more accurate observation capabilities and less restricted data acquisition times than the traditional photogrammetric sensing system. Especially, with the improving safety, durability, and portability of the unmanned RC-helicopter, it is highlighted as a built-in vehicle for close range photogrammetric application, because it can safely conduct observations at a close distance and provide effective flight performance.
In the past years, a low-altitude image acquisition system, mounted on a high-resolution optic device and an infrared camera that is integrated with GPS/INS, monitors frequent changes, particularly in urban areas, and enables speedy surveillance in disaster areas.
The purpose of this study is to determine and evaluate the applicability of low altitude photogrammetric UAV(Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) for flood damage investigation. Here, we try to develop a low altitude photogrammetric UAV based on unmanned helicopter, and then seek to improve its performance. Also, we developed low altitude image data processing techniques for other various applications dealing with acquired imagery.
The results of this study are summarized into four main categories:
First, the low altitude photogrammetric UAV based on the unmanned helicopter is developed and carried out to study performance improvements.
Second, the low altitude image data processing technique is developed to acquire timely damage information and estimate damage speedily and effectively through observation data. This study uses data processing methods to acquire low altitude images, as well as for data pre-processing, feature extraction, image matching, resampling, image registration, and, finally, image map generation. This study adopts a methodology for generating image map through the development of low cost and timesaving low-altitude photogrammetric UAV to collect high-resolution image data, and implement geo-referencing and image mosaicking techniques.
Third, this study suggests a methodology for data integration analysis based on GIS. We investigated data from flood damaged areas and estimated the magnitude of damage using the integration analysis system, which links the GIS technique to multi-source data, like high-resolution satellite imagery, low altitude imagery, video sequences, and digital maps.
Forth, for the evaluation and assessment of study results, we acquired spatial imagery data from real flood damaged areas and applied a developed data processing technique for extracting damage-related information.