Abstract
Abstract. On April 6, 2009, an earthquake of 6.3 magnitude struck central Italy with its epicentre near L'Aquila, at 42.3502° N, 13.3762° E. The earthquake damaged 3000 to 11 000 buildings in the medieval city of L'Aquila. Several buildings totally collapsed, 308 people were killed. The post emergency phase till now is just at its beginning step. Conventional surveying techniques using high precision total stations, GNSS receivers and laser scanners for investigations on damaged buildings are always becoming more automated, accurate and operative and even much more fast. Even if these techniques represent instruments of extreme operability there are still many evident limits on their use, especially regarding the survey of both the roofs and the facades of tall buildings or dangerous places, typical on post earthquake situations. So using micro UAVs for surveying in such particular cases, many of these problems can be easily bypassed. In fact, the present work aims on experimenting using multi-rotor micro UAVs, that will allow high quality image capturing on roofs and facades of structures in the old city center of L'Aquila. To obtain actual stereoscopic acquisitions of buildings some conditions on the geometry of acquisition have to be observed, for this reason, taking as a guideline classic flight photogrammetric, a flight planning software was developed. Accurate planning for UAVs acquisitions is very important also considering the reduced autonomy of such vehicles. This can be a strategic point if we want to use UAVs for early damage assessment and also for post event reconstruction planning.
Highlights
An earthquake strongly damaged L’Aquila, Italy, in April 2009
The region affected by the seismic activity covers an ellipse-shaped area spanning about 15 km in length, parallel to the Apennines mountain chain and 5 km in wideness
According to the Italian National Institute for Geophysic and Vulcanology (INGV) this seismic activity is the result of a perpendicular fault movement on a NW-SE oriented structure which is part of the 800 km long segmented vertical fault system running all along the Apennines mountains and covering great number of Italy’s most important monumental cities
Summary
An earthquake strongly damaged L’Aquila, Italy, in April 2009. That earthquake, killed hundreds and left tens of thousands of inhabitants homeless, hitting the city’s graceful and extensive historic centre, which was its cultural and economic heart. According to the Italian National Institute for Geophysic and Vulcanology (INGV) this seismic activity is the result of a perpendicular fault movement on a NW-SE oriented structure which is part of the 800 km long segmented vertical fault system running all along the Apennines mountains and covering great number of Italy’s most important monumental cities. Within this urban setting, the seismic event caused serious damage to numerous historic buildings, mainly including a valuable heritage that goes from the Baroque and Renaissance periods, including important churches and palaces. The possibility of flying in those low altitudes with such fast and easy repeatability of any survey provides very accurate results of high quality always in very economically convenient way
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