Some tools to support teaching photogrammetry for slope stability assessment and monitoring

This paper describes the use of some tool to help training of photogrammetry for applications in the field of landslide and slope stability assessment and monitoring. These tools have been used in classes of the MSc on Civil Eng. for Risk Mitigation at Politecnico di Milano university, Lecco (Italy). The first tools are hardware facilities. The first one consists of a 'Landslide Simulator,' where shallow landslides may be reproduced at small scale. Simulations are also used here for active-learning purpose. In particular, here the use of digital images to obtain multi-temporal information is presented. The second tool is a 'Rock face 3D Modelling Simulator.' This is used by students to learn how a photogrammetric block should be designed in order to reconstruct rock slopes using Structure-from-Motion photogrammetry. The last to tools are software packages (CloudCompare and LIME) devoted to point cloud analysis (including change detection/deformation analysis) and advanced visualization, respectively. The combination of these tools together with datasets from either lab and the real field, has been successfully tested to provide efficient training to students in an active-learning fashion.