In a video recently recorded by BYU civil engineering professor Kevin Franke, a dog lays in front of the ruins of a house in the Italian mountains. Franke surmises the dog’s owners may have lived there before the devastating earthquake on August 24.
While rescue efforts for the lethal 6.2 magnitude quake are over now, Franke was there for another reason: He was one of four U.S. professors invited to a special geotechnical engineering reconnaissance mission to learn how the earthquake impacted ancient and modern infrastructure.
The expertise of Franke and his BYU colleagues in these types of reconnaissance missions is in the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs or “drones”) to collect imagery at natural disaster sites. This expertise has proven extremely valuable for the Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance Association (GEER), a National Science Foundation-sponsored group that organizes such missions. GEER has included BYU researchers in five of its post-earthquake reconnaissance missions since 2012.
“Looking at the imagery we took, it gave me resolution and purpose, realizing what we’re doing is important so that hopefully, in the future, this type of thing doesn’t happen again,” Franke said. “My ultimate goal is to save lives, that’s what brought me into civil engineering in the first place.”
Franke spent a week in the Apennine Mountain region of Central Italy this month recording hours of drone footage of leveled cities, major slide areas and rock falls. With the help of BYU student and drone pilot Brandon Reimschiissel, Franke recorded over 50 gigabytes of high-resolution visual data. They will now use the data to create 3D computer models of the aftermath using a methodology called structure from motion (SfM) computer vision.
The BYU team worked with Italian researchers, representatives from the Dipartimento Protezione Civile (DPC, the Italian equivalent of FEMA), military personnel and first-line emergency responders to get access to some of the hardest-hit sites, often arranging authorization over the phone en route.
“We’re able to get above and see things that are difficult to see from the ground,” Franke said. “The data we gather with UAVs can be gone in days because of rain or other erosive processes, so we obtain as much aerial imagery from damaged sites as we possibly can.”
2016 Italian Earthquake:
U.S. university team assesses infrastructure damage with drone reconnaissance mission
written by Todd Hollingshead
"My ultimate goal is to save lives, that’s what brought me into civil engineering in the first place."
08 sUAS Guide / Q3 Update, October 2016