UAV- based Photogrammetry and Geocomputing for Hazards and Disaster Risk Monitoring – A Review

BackgroundThe unraveling of the human-induced climate-change crisis has put to the forth the ability of human-beings to impact the planet as a whole, but the discourse of politics has also emphasized the ability of the human race to adapt and counterweigh the environmental change, in turn increasing the public expectation that one should be able to control nature and its affects. Such cozy and reassured society consequently puts an increasing amount of pressure on hazards assessors, emergency and disaster managers “to get it right”, and not only to save the majority, but to save all. To reach such level of competency, emergency relief teams and disaster managers have to work always faster with an increasing need of high quality, high-resolution geospatial data. This need is being partly resolved with the usage of UAV (Unmanned Autonomous Vehicles), both on the ground and airborne.ResultsIn this contribution, we present a review of this field of research that has increased exponentially in the last few years. The rapid democratization of the tool has lead to a significant price reduction and consequently a broad scientific usage that have resulted in thousands of scientific contributions over the last decade. The main usages of UAVs are the mapping of land features and their evolution over time, the mapping of hazards and disasters as they happen, the observation of human activity during an emergency or a disaster, the replacement of telecommunication structures impacted by a natural hazards and the transport of material to isolated groups.ConclusionThose usages are mostly based on the use of single UAVs or UAVs as single agents eventually collaborating. The future is most certainly in the ability to accomplish complex tasks by leveraging the multiple platforms possibilities. As an example, we presented an experiment showing how multiple UAV platforms taking imagery together at the same time could provide true 4D (3D in time) of geo-processes such as river-bed evolution, or rockfalls, etc.

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