TOWARDS THE OPTIMAL PIXEL SIZE OF DEM FOR AUTOMATIC MAPPING OF LANDSLIDE AREAS

In the special issue The use of remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS) in monitoring applications and management of natural hazards we propose a collection of papers that provide a critical description of the state of the art in the use of RPAS for different scenarios. In particular, the sequence of papers can be considered an exhaustive representation of the state of the art of the methodologies and approaches applied to the study and management of natural hazards.

Remotely piloted aerial systems can acquire on-demand ultra-high-resolution images that can be used for the identification of active processes like landslides or volcanic activities but also for the definition of effects of earthquakes, wildfires and floods. In this paper, we present a review of published literature that describes experimental methodologies developed for the study and monitoring of natural hazards.

We investigated the applicability of the SfM–MVS approach for calculating the geodetic mass balance of a glacier and for the detection of the surface displacement rate of an active rock glacier located in the eastern Italian Alps. The results demonstrate that it is possible to reliably quantify the investigated glacial and periglacial processes by means of a quick ground-based photogrammetric survey that was conducted using a consumer grade SRL camera and natural targets as ground control points.