DTM extraction using video-monitoring techniques: application to a fetch limited beach

Abstract

In this work, a video-monitoring system applicable to the study of beach morphodynamics was developed and applied to the DTM extraction of the intertidal zone of a fetch limited beach (Alfeite, Portugal). This low-cost system, intended to complement standard survey tools, has the additional benefit of enabling the continuous monitoring of beach meso-scale process (spatial/temporal scales in the order of kilometers and years, respectively). The development of this system, based on terrestrial photogrammetric techniques, involved three main steps: i) camera calibration, where the internal camera parameters were determined in the laboratory using open-source software; ii) the development of image correction subroutines, which aimed to correct the relatively large image distortions induced by camera optics; this procedure revealed to be essential as the system was built upon standard non-metric surveillance cameras; iii) the development of image rectification subroutines to transform oblique images into vertically equivalent images; this transformation was based on external camera orientation parameters obtained in the field through the surveying of ground control points. Alfeite beach DTM extraction was performed through the shoreline digitalization, in geo-referenced rectified images acquired every 10 min, during the flood. The overlapped set of shoreline curves, properly referred to a vertical datum by means of tide measurements, characterized the intertidal beach morphology. The obtained results were compared with the ones acquired with classic survey techniques revealing very encouraging results; the overall vertical rms was 0.08 m with a maximum value of 0.15 m at 390 m of the camera.