Comparative application of photogrammetry, handmapping and android smartphone for geotechnical mapping and slope stability analysis

Abstract

Abstract With increasing awareness of geotechnical risks in civil and mining structures, taking advantage of smartphone technology to study rocky slopes can play a key role in the development of safe and economical structures for human welfare. In Malawi, there is a research gap on application of portable devices to collect geotechnical data. Geological engineers still use the unsafe tedious handmapping technique to collect geotechnical data. A road cut that experiences frequent rockfall is used as a case study to investigate if there is a role for smartphones in geotechnics by comparing set statistics of data clusters collected through photogrammetry, smartphone and clar inclinometer. Besides low cost, smartphone’ data capture speed is faster than clar inclinometer. Stereographic and kinematic analysis shows that the 75° dipping road cut is predominantly prone to wedge failure with minor planar failure. For slope stability, Q-slope suggests a new slope angle of 60–66°. An acceptable tolerance limit or error between handmapping and remote data capture systems should be less than ±15°. Set analysis on 111 comparable data points gave a maximum pole vector difference of 10.5°, with the minimum having a difference of 4.8°. For dip, the standard deviations vary from 4.9 to 9.5°, while their mean values vary from −2 to 2.75°. For dip directions, the standard deviations vary from 3.2 to 4.3°, while their mean values vary from −6 to 0.75°. Therefore, android smartphones have a role in geotechnics due to their allowable orientation errors, which show less variance in measured dip/dip direction.