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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">ISPRS-Archives</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">ISPRS-Archives</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci.</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub">2194-9034</issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/isprs-archives-XLIX-B2-2026-1029-2026</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Collaborative Multimodal Drone-Based Remote Sensing for Levee Piping Detection</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Hu</surname>
<given-names>Tu</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Liu</surname>
<given-names>Haoxiang</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Wang</surname>
<given-names>Tongqi</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Su</surname>
<given-names>Shan</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Chen</surname>
<given-names>Changjun</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>School of Geodesy and Geomatics, Wuhan University, 129 Luoyu Road, Wuhan 430072, People&apos;s Republic of China</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>23</day>
<month>07</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>XLIX-B2-2026</volume>
<fpage>1029</fpage>
<lpage>1034</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Tu Hu et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLIX-B2-2026/1029/2026/isprs-archives-XLIX-B2-2026-1029-2026.html">This article is available from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLIX-B2-2026/1029/2026/isprs-archives-XLIX-B2-2026-1029-2026.html</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLIX-B2-2026/1029/2026/isprs-archives-XLIX-B2-2026-1029-2026.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLIX-B2-2026/1029/2026/isprs-archives-XLIX-B2-2026-1029-2026.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>This paper proposes a collaborative multimodal unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) remote sensing method for the early detection of levee piping in complex environments. Addressing the identification challenges caused by weak piping thermal anomaly signals and strong background interference, this method innovatively integrates infrared image saliency detection with multi-source information verification. First, by combining global and local saliency analysis, suspected low-temperature anomaly areas in the infrared image are enhanced and extracted. Subsequently, adaptive threshold segmentation is employed to achieve preliminary localization of suspicious areas. To suppress false alarms, the algorithm designs a multi-level filtering mechanism, sequentially screening candidate areas based on the physical characteristics and geographical priors of piping, such as minimum area, temperature distribution variance, and terrain conditions. Finally, point cloud intensity images are introduced for spatial overlap analysis, leveraging the complementary nature of infrared and LiDAR data for cross-validation, thereby achieving precise identification of piping areas. Experiments validated based on field data collected from multiple locations show that this method can effectively enhance the robustness and accuracy of piping detection in complex field environments, providing a reliable technical solution for intelligent levee inspection.</p>
</abstract>
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