Accuracy of sand beach topography surveying by drones and photogrammetry

Accuracy of sand beach topography surveying by drones and photogrammetry. Casella, E., Drechsel, J., Winter, C., Benninghoff, M., & Rovere, A. Geo-Marine Letters, 40(2):255-268, 2020.

Paper doi abstract bibtex

Beaches are characterized by high morphodynamic activity, and high-frequency measurements are needed to understand their states and rates of change. Ideally, beach survey methods should be at once accurate, rapid and low-cost. Recently, unmanned aerial systems (drones) have been increasingly utilized to measure beach topography. In this paper, we present a review of the state of art in drones and photogrammetry for beach surveys and the respective achieved measurement quality (where reported). We then show how drones with a minimal configuration and a low-cost setup can meet the high accuracy and rapidity required for beach surveys. To test a minimal drone and ground control point configuration, we used consumer-grade equipment to perform the same flight path with different cameras and at different altitudes. We then used photogrammetry to produce digital elevation models of the beach. Using a GNSS-RTK system, we collected 2950 independent control points to evaluate the accuracy of the digital elevation models. Results show that, once a few potential sources of uncertainties in the final digital elevation model are taken into account, the average RMSE(z) of the digital elevation models was ~5 cm, with a survey efficiency of ca. 3 m2 min−1. Digital elevation models taken at different times were used to calculate the before–after sediment budget following a storm that hit a sandy coast in Sylt Island at the German North Sea coast.

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 title = {Accuracy of sand beach topography surveying by drones and photogrammetry},
 type = {article},
 year = {2020},
 pages = {255-268},
 volume = {40},
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 last_modified = {2020-06-30T15:52:05.824Z},
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 abstract = {Beaches are characterized by high morphodynamic activity, and high-frequency measurements are needed to understand their states and rates of change. Ideally, beach survey methods should be at once accurate, rapid and low-cost. Recently, unmanned aerial systems (drones) have been increasingly utilized to measure beach topography. In this paper, we present a review of the state of art in drones and photogrammetry for beach surveys and the respective achieved measurement quality (where reported). We then show how drones with a minimal configuration and a low-cost setup can meet the high accuracy and rapidity required for beach surveys. To test a minimal drone and ground control point configuration, we used consumer-grade equipment to perform the same flight path with different cameras and at different altitudes. We then used photogrammetry to produce digital elevation models of the beach. Using a GNSS-RTK system, we collected 2950 independent control points to evaluate the accuracy of the digital elevation models. Results show that, once a few potential sources of uncertainties in the final digital elevation model are taken into account, the average RMSE(z) of the digital elevation models was ~5 cm, with a survey efficiency of ca. 3 m2 min−1. Digital elevation models taken at different times were used to calculate the before–after sediment budget following a storm that hit a sandy coast in Sylt Island at the German North Sea coast.},
 bibtype = {article},
 author = {Casella, Elisa and Drechsel, Jan and Winter, Christian and Benninghoff, Markus and Rovere, Alessio},
 doi = {10.1007/s00367-020-00638-8},
 journal = {Geo-Marine Letters},
 number = {2}
}

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