Olumese Efeovbokhan (recipient of three LASmoons)
Geosciences, School of Geography
University of Nottingham, UK
Background:
One of the vital requirements to successfully drive and justify favorable flood risk management policies is the availability of reliable data for hydrological modelling. Unfortunately, this poses a big challenge in data-sparse regions and has resulted in uncoordinated and ineffective flood risk management policies with some areas left at the mercy of the floods they are exposed to. This research is focused on the ability to successfully generate data required for hydrological modelling using affordable and easy-to-replicate methods. The research will utilize unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for the generation of bare earth models (DTMs) from photogrammetry points, which will be subsequently used for flood vulnerability mapping.
Goal:
Generate a bare earth model using a combination of Agisoft Photoscan and LAStools and then validate its suitability for hydrological modelling. Should the generated model prove to be suitable we will use it to conduct flood sensitivity analysis and inundation modelling in other data-sparse regions using high resolution bare earth models generated the same way.
Data:
+ high-resolution photogrammetry point cloud for a portion of the study area
– – – imagery obtained with an Ebee Sensefly drone flight
– – – photogrammetry point cloud generated with Photoscan by AgiSoft
+ classified LiDAR point cloud with a resolution of 1 pulse per square meter obtained for the study area from the Lagos State Government
LAStools processing:
1) tile large photogrammetry point cloud into tiles with buffer [lastile]
2) mark set of points whose z coordinate is a certain percentile of that of their neighbors [lasthin]
3) remove isolated low points from the set of marked points [lasnoise]
4) classify marked points into ground and non-ground [lasground]
5) pull in points close above and below the ground [lasheight]
6) create Digital Terrain Model (DTM) from ground points [las2dem]
7) merge and hillshade individual raster DTMs [blast2dem]