Use of digital photogrammetry techniques for supporting provisional structures in seismic emergency response

Abstract

The disastrous earthquakes, which have occurred in Italy in the recent years, have aimed the recent Geomatics research goals towards
the development of new rapid surveying strategies in disaster management and damage assessment operations. The possibilities offered
by the advances in digital photogrammetry techniques and the constant improvements in image-matching algorithms are an important
support to the design and realisation of urgent technical measures in the immediate post-earthquake scenarios. In a broadly precarious
operating environment, one of the key factors is the safe planning of monitoring and response activities on the built heritage. Given
the need to reduce firefighters' stay time in hazardous areas, the object of this research was to test an application of terrestrial and UAV
(Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) photogrammetry for the rapid metric surveying of damaged architectural heritage, in order to provide a
fast and reliable solution aimed at the design of provisional structures for the Italian National Firefighters Corps.