INVESTIGATION OF THE SUITABILITY OF A PERSONAL LASER SCANNING DEVICE FOR THE MONITORING OF SMALL WATER BODIES

Abstract. This study investigates the applicability of a personal laser scanner (PLS) in surveying small creeks in urban areas. The surveying of the creek geometry can be done only with the PLS system or as a combination of terrestrial PLS measurement and airborne image sequence acquisition by an uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV). For both methods, georeferencing is performed using RTK-GNSS. Based on the combination of the datasets and from additional terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) comparison, conclusions can be drawn about the accuracy of the PLS measurements. Point-to-mesh based distance calculations between the PLS and UAV measurement showed a variation of ± 0.10 m (96% of points) at selected naturally vegetated sites. The comparison of the PLS and TLS data set revealed differences with a standard deviation of 0.02 m at solid natural (tree trunk) structures and ground areas. The calculated differences grow with increasing distance to the PLS trajectory.