Integration of multicopter drone measurements and ground-based data for landslide monitoring

The multicopter drone has an increasing role in remote sensing and aerial photography. The piloting ease and the mechanical simplicity are the main reasons for drone diffusion as a hobby and for professional use. To improve the existing multicopters, the Department of Earth Sciences of Florence (DST) has developed a new type of chassis structure that overcomes some critical issues for scientific and heavy payload or long flight applications. Using the DST Drone, a long term monitoring campaign was performed to understand the possibility of this rising technology to characterize and to monitor landslides. High temporal frequency DEMs are performed by the DST drone in Ricasoli village, in the Upper Arno river Valley (Tuscany) and integrated with data collected by a wireless network of automated instruments: extensometers, biaxial tiltmeters and laser distometer. The integration of different monitoring methods improve the understanding of the movement and the reliability of landslide monitoring. Moreover a validation of drone slope monitoring technique has started to extend the future use of multicopter over landslides areas.