Presentation - APPLICATION OF DRONES AND OSS FOR MAPPING AND VISUAL INSPECTION OF EMBANKMENT DAMS

To evaluate the safety conditions for a geotechnical structure, particularly a dam is very important to know its actual geometry and to perform visual inspections as a tool to aid the dam monitoring. Nowadays drone technology is becoming more available making it a valuable tool to aid for visual inspections and geometry assessment. On the contrary, the software for image processing and model generation is still quite expensive and requires up-to-date hardware. Open Source Software (OSS) is a different approach in which instead of a copyright user are granted a copyleft licensing allowing for a more versatile use and a better resource management. For example, with OSS one can take advantage of distributed high-performance clusters without any licensing issues. The application of drones and open-source software for mapping geotechnical structures is a very interesting and productive solution, because with a low cost and fast solution one can produce quality orthophotos, surface models and cross-sections, to be used for other analysis like slopestability and stress-strain and seepage finite element analysis. This paper describes the application of the drone for inspection and mapping of Sambade Dam, as well the application of open-source software to process and to produce data and models to aid in the dam safety evaluation.