We recently teamed up with Ocebile on a flood modelling survey of a river in South East Queensland.
We flew the DJI M400 with the L3 LiDAR payload to capture the terrain above water, while Ocebile’s Australian-built McBathy remote survey boat ran single-beam sonar below the surface. The LiDAR data also lets us classify and strip out vegetation in post-processing, so the riverbanks come through as a true ground surface rather than tree canopy and undergrowth.
Stitching the two datasets together gave us a single Digital Elevation Model that extends from the riverbanks down to the bed, with no gap at the waterline. The combined approach is more accurate and efficient than traditional ground-based methods, with denser coverage of both the banks and the bed than crews on foot could reasonably collect.
Flood modelling depends on what’s under the water as much as what sits above it. Accurate hydraulic models need both, and pairing aerial LiDAR with remote bathymetry covers the full picture in a single mobilisation.
We’ll be using the same approach on upcoming projects where the LiDAR and bathymetric datasets need to form one continuous surface.
