KNN Local Linear Regression for Demarcating River Cross-Sections with Point Cloud Data from UAV Photogrammetry URiver-X

Aerial surveying with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has been popularly employed in river management and flood monitoring. One of the major processes in UAV aerial surveying for river applications is to demarcate the cross-section of a river. From the photo images of aerial surveying, a point cloud dataset can be abstracted with the structure from the motion technique. To accurately demarcate the cross-section from the cloud points, an appropriate delineation technique is required to reproduce the characteristics of natural and manmade channels, including abrupt changes, bumps and lined shapes. Therefore, a nonparametric estimation technique, called the K-nearest neighbor local linear regression (KLR) model, was tested in the current study to demarcate the cross-section of a river with a point cloud dataset from aerial surveying. The proposed technique was tested with synthetically simulated trapezoidal, U-shape and V-shape channels. In addition, the proposed KLR model was compared with the traditional polynomial regression model and another nonparametric technique, locally weighted scatterplot smoothing (LOWESS). The experimental study was performed with the river experiment center in Andong, South Korea. Furthermore, the KLR model was applied to two real case studies in the Migok-cheon stream on Hapcheon-gun and Pori-cheon stream on Yecheon-gun and compared to the other models. With the extensive applications to the feasible river channels, the results indicated that the proposed KLR model can be a suitable alternative for demarcating the cross-section of a river with point cloud data from UAV aerial surveying by reproducing the critical characteristics of natural and manmade channels, including abrupt changes and small bumps as well as different shapes. Finally, the limitation of the UAV-driven demarcation approach was also discussed due to the penetrability of RGB sensors to water.