Surveying a Slope Deformation along Highway by Application of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)

Abstract

Summary Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) has been rapidly developed for the past decades. This technique has distinct advantages over traditional methods to produce aerial photographs. It can provide high resolution images with less time and cost. With photogrammetric techniques coupled with software as well as sufficient known parameters (focal length, pixel size, and distance of sensor from ground), the images can be processed to generate the contour map by commercial softwares. This research offers key insights on the application of UAV photogrammetry for slope surveying in civil engineering. The objective of this research is to validate the accuracy of applying photogrammetric methods via UAV surveying for a slope failure. Several surveying points are chosen to compare with the elevation obtained from UAV Photogrammetry. The result shows a difference less than 100mm which was found to be acceptable. The gain in time and labour savings reinforces the prospect of using UAV Photogrammetry as a cost-effective means for surveying of on-going construction site, slope survey, monitoring of slope movement and other application for civil engineering.