Fixed photogrammetric systems for natural hazard monitoring with high spatio-temporal resolution

Abstract. In this publication we address the lack of technical expertise in the geoscience community in the design and construction of photogrammetric systems for monitoring natural hazards at high spatio-temporal resolution. Accordingly, we provide in-depth information on the components, assembly instructions, and programming codes required to build them, making them accessible to researchers from different disciplines who are interested in 3D change detection monitoring. Each system comprises five photographic modules and a wireless transmission system for real-time image transfer. As an alternative to lidar (light detection and ranging), high-end digital cameras offer a simpler and more cost-effective solution for the generation of 3D models, especially in fixed time-lapse monitoring systems. The acquired images, in combination with algorithms that allow the creation of improved 3D models, offer change detection performance comparable to lidar. We showcase the usefulness of our approach by presenting real-world applications in the field of geohazard monitoring. Our findings highlight the potential of our method to detect pre-failure deformation and identify rockfalls with a theoretical change detection threshold of only 3–4 cm, thereby demonstrating the potential to achieve similar accuracies to lidar but at a much lower cost. Furthermore, thanks to the higher data acquisition frequency, the results show how the overlap of events that leads to an erroneous interpretation of the behaviour of the active area is minimized, allowing, for example, more accurate correlations between weather conditions and rockfall activity.