The Effectiveness of a UAV-Based LiDAR Survey to Develop Digital Terrain Models and Topographic Texture Analyses

This study presents a comparison of data acquired from three LiDAR sensors from different manufacturers, i.e., Yellow Scan Mapper (YSM), AlphaAir 450 Airborne LiDAR System CHC Navigation (CHC) and DJI Zenmuse L1 (L1). The same area was surveyed with laser sensors mounted on the DIJ Matrice 300 RTK UAV platform. In order to compare the data, a diverse test area located in the north-western part of the Lublin Province in eastern Poland was selected. The test area was a gully system with high vegetation cover. In order to compare the UAV information, LiDAR reference data were used, which were collected within the ISOK project (acquired for the whole area of Poland). In order to examine the differentiation of the acquired data, both classified point clouds and DTM products calculated on the basis of point clouds acquired from individual sensors were compared. The analyses showed that the largest average height differences between terrain models calculated from point clouds were recorded between the CHC sensor and the base data, exceeding 2.5 m. The smallest differences were recorded between the L1 sensor and ISOK data—RMSE was 0.31 m. The use of UAVs to acquire very high resolution data can only be used locally and must be subject to very stringent landing site preparation procedures, as well as data processing in DTM and its derivatives.