Challenges and Opportunities for UAV-Borne Thermal Imaging

Vasterling, Margarete; Meyer, Uwe

doi:10.1007/978-94-007-6639-6_4

Cited by 23 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…The uses of these sensors on UAV are various (Vasterling and Meyer 2013), ranging from search and rescue missions (e.g., Rudol and Doherty 2008) to precision agriculture (e.g., Turner et al 2010) and earth science applications, as in Fig. 4, or volcanology (Nishar et al 2016;Amici et al 2013).…”

Section: Thermal Detectorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for engineering geology applications

Giordan

Adams

Aicardi

et al. 2020

Bull Eng Geol Environ

241

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This paper represents the result of the IAEG C35 Commission "Monitoring methods and approaches in engineering geology applications" workgroup aimed to describe a general overview of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and their potentiality in several engineering geology applications. The use of UAV has progressively increased in the last decade and nowadays started to be considered a standard research instrument for the acquisition of images and other information on demand over an area of interest. UAV represents a cheap and fast solution for the on-demand acquisition of detailed images of an area of interest and the creation of detailed 3D models and orthophoto. The use of these systems required a good background of data processing and a good drone pilot ability for the management of the flight mission in particular in a complex environment.

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Section: Thermal Detectorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for engineering geology applications

Giordan

Adams

Aicardi

et al. 2020

Bull Eng Geol Environ

241

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“…In these cases, although the lane closure is not required, the vehicle speed on the bridge is reduced and it is inconvenient in certain aspects. Recently, some researchers have utilized UAV-IRC to capture thermal images in order to conduct bridge inspection [40,41,42,43,44]. In 2017, Omar et al used UAV-IRC to detect defects in a concrete bridge [40].…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Detection of Delamination with Various Width-to-depth Ratios in Concrete Bridge Deck Using Passive IRT: Limits and Applicability

et al. 2019

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In bridge structures, concrete decks have a higher risk of damage than other components owing to the direct impact of traffic. This study aims to develop a comprehensive system for bridge inspection using passive infrared thermography (IRT). Experiments were conducted on a concrete specimen (assumed as the surface of the bridge deck) embedded artificial delaminations with different width-to-depth ratios (WTDRs). Both professional handheld IR camera (H-IRC) and a UAV mounted with an IR camera (UAV-IRC) were employed simultaneously to capture the surface temperature of the structure. The present work indicates that the passive IRT technique with an H-IRC can be used to detect delaminations located at depths of 4 cm or less from the structure surface if the WTDRs are not lesser than 1.9 for daytime and 2.5 for nighttime when testing on a sunny day. In addition, the larger the WTDR, the higher the temperature difference can be produced, thus delaminations could be observed more clearly. Furthermore, our study suggests that the concrete bridge deck inspection using passive IRT can produce appropriate results if the inspection is performed from 10:00 to 15:00 or from 19:30 to approximately 2:00 on a sunny day. Good agreement between the results obtained from tests using H-IRC and UAV-IRC was observed, which validates the application of UAV-IRC in real structure inspection.

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“…In contrast to satellite or ground-based measurements, UAVs allow researchers to obtain spatially distributed and highly geometrically resolved datasets on demand and in a range of atmospheric conditions (i.e., they are not limited by cloud cover). Within the last few years, there have been efforts to miniaturize sensors that can leverage these new observation platforms, providing advanced capabilities in optical, thermal and hyperspectral sensing [36,37]. Apart from being used to characterize the spatial and temporal variations of the surface equilibrium state and fluxes, ultra-high resolution observations of the diurnal cycle could also be used for satellite-based LST evaluation (e.g., ECOSTRESS).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Capturing the Diurnal Cycle of Land Surface Temperature Using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

et al. 2018

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Characterizing the land surface temperature (LST) and its diurnal cycle is important in understanding a range of surface properties, including soil moisture status, evaporative response, vegetation stress and ground heat flux. While remote-sensing platforms present a number of options to retrieve this variable, there are inevitable compromises between the resolvable spatial and temporal resolution. For instance, the spatial resolution of geostationary satellites, which can provide sub-hourly LST, is often too coarse (3 km) for many applications. On the other hand, higher-resolution polar orbiting satellites are generally infrequent in time, with return intervals on the order of weeks, limiting their capacity to capture surface dynamics. With recent developments in the application of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), there is now the opportunity to collect LST measurements on demand and at ultra-high spatial resolution. Here, we detail the collection and analysis of a UAV-based LST dataset, with the purpose of examining the diurnal surface temperature response: something that has not been possible from traditional satellite platforms at these scales. Two separate campaigns were conducted over a bare desert surface in combination with either Rhodes grass or a recently harvested maize field. In both cases, thermal imagery was collected between 0800 and 1700 local solar time. The UAV-based diurnal cycle was consistent with ground-based measurements, with a mean correlation coefficient and root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.99 and 0.68 °C, respectively. LST retrieved over the grass surface presented the best results, with an RMSE of 0.45 °C compared to 0.67 °C for the single desert site and 1.28 °C for the recently harvested maize surface. Even considering the orders of magnitude difference in scale, an exploratory analysis comparing retrievals of the UAV-based diurnal cycle with METEOSAT geostationary data yielded pleasing results (R = 0.98; RMSE = 1.23 °C). Overall, our analysis revealed a diurnal range over the desert and maize surfaces of ~20 °C and ~17 °C respectively, while the grass showed a reduced amplitude of ~12 °C. Considerable heterogeneity was observed over the grass surface at the peak of the diurnal cycle, which was likely indicative of the varying crop water status. To our knowledge, this study presents the first spatially varying analysis of the diurnal LST captured at ultra-high resolution, from any remote platform. Our findings highlight the considerable potential to utilize UAV-based retrievals to enhance investigations across multi-disciplinary studies in agriculture, hydrology and land-atmosphere investigations.

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Challenges and Opportunities for UAV-Borne Thermal Imaging

Cited by 23 publications

References 28 publications

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for engineering geology applications

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for engineering geology applications

Detection of Delamination with Various Width-to-depth Ratios in Concrete Bridge Deck Using Passive IRT: Limits and Applicability

Capturing the Diurnal Cycle of Land Surface Temperature Using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

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