Anais do XIX Simpósio Brasileiro de Sensoriamento Remoto

This research article aims to evaluate the altimetric accuracy of Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) generated from remote sensing images acquired by digital cameras transported in unmanned aerial vehicles generically known as Drones. The DEMs generation was carried out with the software PIX4D using as input the images of the drone flights and control points of high planimetric and altimetric accuracy acquired in field works by Global Positioning System (GPS) equipment. The DEMs have spatial resolution of 1 meter and their altimetric qualities were evaluated by cross validations using the set high accuracy control points. The methodology of this work was applied to actual information within three geographic regions in the municipality of Jacareí, São Paulo, Brazil. The work presents qualitative and quantitative analysis of the results considering altimetric error metrics, statistics and quadratic mean errors, for the DEMs obtained by drones and for Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) elevation grids available at no cost on the internet. Comparative analyzes of the results considering soil cover information, observed through remote sensing images of the RapidEye satellite, were performed too. The results show that the drone DEMs have altimetric accuracy of less than 1 meter, but with different values in the three regions observed. As expected, the altimetric accuracy was lower for the SRTM data, since its spatial resolution is 30 meters.