• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.56 no.spc1
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• pp.1027-1036
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• 2023

Coastal topographic information is crucial in coastal management, but point measurment based approeaches, which are labor intensive, are generally applied to land and underwater, separately. This study introduces an efficient method enabling land and undetwater surveys using an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). This method involves applying two different algorithms to measure the topography on land and water depth, respectively, using UAV imagery and merge them to reconstruct whole coastal digital elevation model. Acquisition of the landside terrain is achieved using the Structure-from-Motion Multi-View Stereo technique with spatial scan imagery. Independently, underwater bathymetry is retrieved by employing a depth inversion technique with a drone-acquired wave field video. After merging the two digital elevation models into a local coordinate, interpolation is performed for areas where terrain measurement is not feasible, ultimately obtaining a continuous nearshore terrain. We applied the proposed survey technique to Jangsa Beach, South Korea, and verified that detailed terrain characteristics, such as berm, can be measured. The proposed UAV-based survey method has significant efficiency in terms of time, cost, and safety compared to existing methods.