Elevate was again entrusted by the Hawaii Department of Transportation (HDOT) to image and monitor sections of a major coastal roadway impacted by severe erosion. The subject areas requiring assessment were too dangerous for traditional monitoring methods, making Elevate’s expertise in remote data collection methodologies an ideal solution.
For this project, Elevate collected both LiDAR and high-resolution imagery across two areas of interest (AOIs). These areas included incised road cuts as well as coastal areas that necessitated collection with a sUAS to maintain safety and obtain sufficient data for the Clients needs . The Team used a combination of pre-programmed autonomous flights and manually controlled flights. The manual control was needed when operating along the 200-foot tall cliffs as well as when operating right above the water. Using these methods Elevate’s skilled pilots were able to accomplish their goals without incident to the public, property or equipment.
The imagery was used to create an 3D orthomosaic model, enabling clients to visually assess the site conditions through platforms like Google Earth or ArcGIS. LiDAR was used for its ability to penetrate dense vegetation, delivering an accurate representation of the underlying terrain and the true condition of the landmass. Both data sets were aligned with the Client’s local coordinate system allowing them to integrate this new data seamlessly into their existing spatial database. The Client has used this data to evaluate the risk of coastal erosion and to plan mitigation measures. Elevate has already been engaged to image the site again and provide a temporal analysis to show changes to the site over time.