Abstract
Abstract. Light Detection Ranging (Lidar) is an efficient tool to gather points reflected from a terrain and store them in a xyz coordinate system, allowing the generation of 3D data sets to manage geoinformation. Translation of these coordinates, from an arbitrary system into a geographical base, makes data feasible and useful to calculate volumes and define topographic characteristics at different scales. Lidar technological advancement in topographic mapping enables the generation of highly accurate and densely sampled elevation models, which are in high demand by many industries like construction, mining and forestry. This study merges terrestrial and aerial Lidar data to evaluate the effectiveness of these tools assessing volumetric changes after a hurricane event of riverbeds and scour bridges The resulted information could be an optimal approach to improve hydrological and hydraulic models, to aid authorities in proper to decision making in construction, urban planning, and homeland security.
Highlights
This paper proposes the Lidar system as a technological tool to obtain an accurate set of information, which can give a better approach for the creation of Digital Terrain Models (DTM) (Bitelli et al, 2004), land use classification, bridge geoinformation, among many other products that could be used for the National Water Commission or other agencies to solve information deficiencies to improve environmental policies and/or risk management
This study proved that the erosive track of the hurricane Alex in the assessed area was greater over those places where the design of the bridges strangled the circulation of the natural flow of the channel
The impact of the hurricane Alex in the Metropolitan Area of Monterrey (MAM) represents the best example of the risk to this type of events and the vulnerability that population and the infrastructure by itself has in the area; in addition the hurricane modified the river bed and changed its elevation due to sediment transportation, and no plan to monitor the real impact was followed right after
Summary
Many countries consider prevention and mitigation as the most effective way to reduce the negative consequences of natural disasters. Bridge scouring is the number one cause of structural failure (Yu and Yu, 2011); only in the United States over 1.000 bridges had fallen in a period of 30 years, 60% are attributed to catastrophic events related to hydrometeorological phenomena and only 2% to seismic causes (NCHRP, 2003 and Shirole and Holt, 1991). Structural engineers around the world have the task to develop real time bridge scour monitoring systems to evaluate risk management, especially in rivertowns. The strangling of the natural river’s flow is a common phenomenon, attributed mostly to the limited hydraulic calculations. The actual bridge structure design considers the current width of the rivers. When an intensive flow occurs, rivers regain its original width and the bridge structures stand eroded.
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