Bathymetric Structure from Motion: Change Detection and Technical Improvements CODE:

James T. Dietrich*, Department of Geography, University of Northern Iowa, USA james.dietrich@uni.edu py_sfm_depth
Amy S. Woodget, Institute of Science & Environment, University of Worcester, UK https://geojames.github.io/py_sfm_depth/

Abstract Water Surfaces Change Detection

• Quantifying the rates of geomorphic change is critical for a range of One of the critical elements in the refraction correction
applications within river science and management, including monitoring equation is the water surface elevation (needed to
the evolution of river restoration and assessing the impacts of flow calculate the apparent depth (ha) and the true depth
modifications and engineering structures on habitat availability. (h).
• The tools available for monitoring small river systems at high spatial
resolutions are growing with the adoption/availability of airborne/ The water surface was parameterized by digitizing the
terrestrial laser scanning data and Structure from Motion (SfM)-based waters edge in the dense point cloud for each year.
photogrammetry. The downstream elevations were smoothed using a Highlighted Below
• Monitoring the bathymetry of these smaller stream systems is still limited Robust Lowess filter and the filtered values used as the
to traditional survey techniques and these methods do not provide primary basis for the water surface.
spatially continuous data and can overlook important changes at a Downstream plot of the mapped water surfaces for 2016 and 2017
range of spatial scales. • For most of the river the water surface was assumed Shallow riffle from the middle of the study site illustrating problematic areas with complex water surfaces. The color ramp areas are the
below water and the natural color areas were above the digitized water surface.
• Recently, we have advanced our capabilities for spatially continuous to be planar (e.g. level from left bank to right bank)
surveying of fluvial geomorphology at finer spatial scales using • Riffles present interesting and complex topography
unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and SfM photogrammetry. that required additional water’s edge points to
• In this research, we highlight several methodological improvements for parameterize
the bathymetric SfM process and assess the potential for refraction • The shallow (< 5cm) portions of some riffles were
corrected SfM data to be used for change detection in the lowland difficult to capture because of the complex
River Teme in Herefordshire, UK. topography (Shintani and Fonstad 2017), however
research suggests that shallow parts of the river may
not need refraction correction (Woodget et al. 2016)
Study Area
The reach of the River Teme in this study flows though northern 2016 2017
Herefordshire near Bucknell, ~3.5km east of the England/Wales border.
The site saw large floods in the winter of 2014-2015 that initiated a
meander cut-off and the site has been rapidly changing as it adjusts to its
new condition.
Accuracy Refraction Correction vs GPS Validation

The accuracy of the refraction correction was tested

against bed elevations collected by RTK-GPS.

• 2016 - 363 Bed Elevations

• 2017 - 1226 Bed Elevations
Refraction Correction Error Statistics
Mean St. Dev. 95% Limit of
Error σ Confidence Detection
2016 -0.029 0.053 0.105
±0.043
2017 0.052 0.079 0.156

Georeferencing Error Statistics

2016 X Y Z
Methods Mean 0.000 0.000 0.000
Aerial Photography 0.020 0.026 0.017
σ
2016 2017
The 2016 aerial photography was collected with a DJI Inspire 1 and the 95% Conf. 0.041 0.052 0.034
2017 photographs were collected with a DJI Phantom 4 Pro. 2017 X Y Z
Mean 0.000 0.000 0.000
SfM σ 0.032 0.027 0.012
95% Conf. 0.033 0.027 0.012
Both datasets were processed in Agisoft Photoscan v1.4, the sparse point
clouds were filtered and georeferenced, and the camera positions
optimized for a lens distortion model utilizing K1, K2, K3, K4, P1, P2. The
dense point clouds were generated at Medium density (~2cm point
spacing) Apparent Depth The multi-view refraction problem

Refraction Correction One open question with SfM bathymetry is what the SfM process is “seeing” at the bottom
of the river bed. With all the different camera angles used to build the SfM model, each
The underwater portions of the dense point cloud needed to be corrected camera “should” be seeing the river bed at different apparent depths (illustrated right).
for refraction. This was accomplished with py_sfm_depth, a custom python
processing script written by the author and available via Github. The
software calculates all of the To try to answer this question we took the known depths for the 2016 data (363 RTK-GPS
possible combinations of camera/ validation points) and inverted the correction equation to solve for ha given all of the
different camera angles. These are the theoretical apparent depths (hat). Change Conclusions
point combinations, calculates the
refraction angles, and then corrects • The 2016 data had excellent accuracy, but the 2017 data was less accurate.
the bed elevations based on a
Theoretical apparent depths vs. SfM apparent depths One major contributor to the error in the 2017 data is the water surface,
derivation of Snell’s Law: which was much more complex than the 2016 (e.g. more riffle and runs).
• The theoretical apparent depths actually matched with the SfM apparent
depths better that expected. This bodes well for the refraction correction and
give us a good starting point for improvements in the core algorithms and
statistics.
(Dietrich 2017) • Overall, refraction corrected SfM data will be an important tool moving
Trigonometry of the refraction angles for a single camera
forward for geomorphic and river habitat change studies in clear water
systems.
Banks Uncorrected SfM
References
WATER SURFACE Dietrich JT. 2017. Bathymetric Structure-from-Motion: extracting shallow stream bathymetry from multi-view stereo
photogrammetry. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms 42 : 355–364. DOI: 10.1002/esp.4060
Shintani C, Fonstad MA. 2017. Comparing remote-sensing techniques collecting bathymetric data from a gravel-bed river.
International Journal of Remote Sensing 38 : 2883–2902. DOI: 10.1080/01431161.2017.1280636
Woodget AS, Carbonneau PE, Visser F, Maddock IP. 2015. Quantifying submerged fluvial topography using hyperspatial
Refraction Corrected resolution UAS imagery and structure from motion photogrammetry. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms 40 : 47–64.
Point cloud cross-section illustrating the different SfM surfaces DOI: 10.1002/esp.3613