Examining high-resolution survey methods for monitoring cliff erosion at an operational scale

This paper aims to compare models from terrestrial laser scanning (TLS), terrestrial photogrammetry (TP), and unmanned aerial vehicle photogrammetry (UAVP) surveys to evaluate their potential in cliff erosion monitoring. TLS has commonly been used to monitor cliff-face erosion (monitoring since 2010...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Pauline Letortu, Marion Jaud, Philippe Grandjean, Jérôme Ammann, Stéphane Costa, Olivier Maquaire, Robert Davidson, Nicolas Le Dantec, Christophe Delacourt
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Taylor & Francis Group 2018-07-01
Series:GIScience & Remote Sensing
Subjects:
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15481603.2017.1408931
Description
Summary:This paper aims to compare models from terrestrial laser scanning (TLS), terrestrial photogrammetry (TP), and unmanned aerial vehicle photogrammetry (UAVP) surveys to evaluate their potential in cliff erosion monitoring. TLS has commonly been used to monitor cliff-face erosion (monitoring since 2010 in Normandy) because it guarantees results of high precision. Due to some uncertainties and limitations of TLS, TP and UAVP can be seen as alternative methods. First, the texture quality of the photogrammetry models is better than that of TLS which could be useful for analysis and interpretation. Second, a comparison between the TLS model and UAV or TP models shows that the mean error value is mainly from 0.013 to 0.03 m, which meets the precision requirements for monitoring cliff erosion by rock falls and debris falls. However, TP is more sensitive to roughness than UAVP, which increases the data standard deviation. Thus, UAVP appears to be more reliable in our study and provides a larger spatial coverage, enabling a larger cliff-face section to be monitored with a regular resolution. Nevertheless, the method remains dependent on the weather conditions and the number of operators is not reduced. Third, even though UAVP has more advantages than TP, the methods could be interchangeable when no pilot is available, when weather conditions are bad or when high reactivity is needed.
ISSN:1548-1603
1943-7226