Land and Seabed Surface Modelling in the Coastal Zone Using UAV/USV-Based Data Integration

Area of Science:

• Geosciences
• Geomatics
• Coastal Engineering

Background:

• The coastal zone, characterized by land-sea interaction, requires accurate modeling to understand dynamic changes.
• Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) offer advanced capabilities for precise terrain determination in coastal areas.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present land and seabed surface modeling in the coastal zone using integrated data from UAVs and USVs.
• To compare the accuracy of different interpolation methods for developing accurate topo-bathymetric models.

Main Methods:

• Geospatial data integration from UAV and USV-based bathymetric and photogrammetric measurements.
• Application of Inverse Distance to a Power (IDP), kriging, Modified Shepard's Method (MSM), and Natural Neighbour Interpolation (NNI) for terrain modeling.
• Accuracy analysis of developed models, differentiating between land and seabed components.

Main Results:

• Development of integrated topo-bathymetric models for the coastal zone.
• Kriging (linear model) demonstrated the highest accuracy for both land and seabed surface modeling.
• Minimal differences (0.032 m land, 0.034 m seabed) between interpolated and measured values using kriging.

Conclusions:

• The kriging (linear model) method is the most accurate for coastal zone land and seabed surface modeling.
• Integrated UAV/USV data and kriging provide a highly accurate approach for coastal terrain analysis.
• The study validates the effectiveness of advanced remote sensing and interpolation techniques in coastal geomatics.