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Journal Article

Brief communication: An autonomous UAV for catchment-wide monitoring of a debris flow torrent

Authors

Walter,  Fabian
External Organizations;

Hodel,  Elias
External Organizations;

Mannerfelt,  Erik S.
External Organizations;

/persons/resource/klcook

Cook,  K.
2.6 Seismic Hazard and Risk Dynamics, 2.0 Geophysics, Departments, GFZ Publication Database, Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum;

/persons/resource/mdietze

Dietze,  Michael
4.6 Geomorphology, 4.0 Geosystems, Departments, GFZ Publication Database, Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum;

Estermann,  Livia
External Organizations;

Wenner,  Michaela
External Organizations;

Farinotti,  Daniel
External Organizations;

Fengler,  Martin
External Organizations;

Hammerschmidt,  Lukas
External Organizations;

Hänsli,  Flavia
External Organizations;

Hirschberg,  Jacob
External Organizations;

McArdell,  Brian
External Organizations;

Molnar,  Peter
External Organizations;

External Ressource
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Fulltext (public)

5015098.pdf
(Publisher version), 3MB

Supplementary Material (public)
There is no public supplementary material available
Citation

Walter, F., Hodel, E., Mannerfelt, E. S., Cook, K., Dietze, M., Estermann, L., Wenner, M., Farinotti, D., Fengler, M., Hammerschmidt, L., Hänsli, F., Hirschberg, J., McArdell, B., Molnar, P. (2022): Brief communication: An autonomous UAV for catchment-wide monitoring of a debris flow torrent. - Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences (NHESS), 22, 12, 4011-4018.
https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-22-4011-2022


Cite as: https://gfzpublic.gfz-potsdam.de/pubman/item/item_5015098
Abstract
Debris flows threaten communities in mountain regions worldwide. Combining modern photogrammetric processing with autonomous unoccupied aerial vehicle (UAV) flights at sub-weekly intervals allows mapping of sediment dynamics in a debris flow catchment. This provides important information for sediment disposition that pre-conditions the catchment for debris flow occurrence. At the Illgraben debris flow catchment in Switzerland, our autonomous UAV launched nearly 50 times in the snow-free periods in 2019–2021 with typical flight intervals of 2–4 d, producing 350–400 images every flight. The observed terrain changes resulting from debris flows exhibit preferred locations of erosion and deposition, including memory effects as previously deposited material is preferentially removed during subsequent debris flows. Such data are critical for the validation of geomorphological process models. Given the remote terrain, the mapped short-term erosion and deposition structures are difficult to obtain with conventional measurements. The proposed method thus fills an observational gap, which ground-based monitoring and satellite-based remote sensing cannot fill as a result of limited access, reaction time, spatial resolution, or involved costs.