Mapping landscape components by UAV multispectral surveying platform

This research explores the potential of the Unmanned Aircraft Vehicles (UAV) multispectral surveying platform for mapping landscape components, particularly referring to open spaces that are localized outside the main urban settlements. In the landscape research field, while 2D cartography is conventionally recognized as a tool for landscape representation, the emerging role of high-accuracy 3D representations, derived by UAV data acquisitions, is not yet fully clarified and expressed. By analyzing a real case study located in Cernusco sul Naviglio (north-east of Milan), the research shows how the UAV multispectral platform can be performed for collecting, visualizing, interpreting, and mapping landscape components, by exploiting Ultra-High-Resolution (UHR) data. The selected study area allows to consider heterogeneous objects that are recognizable, at the landscape scale, as areal entities (green areas, vegetated areas, agricultural fields), linear entities (waterways, infrastructure, pedestrian and cycling paths), and punctual entities (single buildings and single trees). The research shows how different kinds of representation can support the analysis and interpretation of landscape components from point clouds to final outputs (3D Mesh, DEM, and Orthomosaic), also by exploiting the potential of geometric aspects and material attributes by multispectral bands (i.e. vegetation indices). The research also discusses whether (1) the higher accuracy of spatial information, (2) the detection of objects at a finer scale, and (3) the making of 3D models derived by photogrammetric processing, can effectively support landscape-scale analysis and applications.