Development of a Digital Twin of the Harbour Waters and Surrounding Infrastructure Based on Spatial Data Acquired with Multimodal and Multi-Sensor Mapping Systems

Abstract

Digital twin is an attractive technology for the representation of objects due to its ability to produce precise measurements and their geovisualisation. Of special interest is the application and fusion of various remote sensing techniques for shallow river and inland water areas, commonly measured using conventional surveying or multimodal photogrammetry. The construction of spatial digital twins of river areas requires the use of multi-platform and multi-sensor measurements to obtain reliable data of the river environment. Due to the high dynamics of river changes, the cost of measurements and the difficult-to-access measurement area, the mapping should be large-scale and simultaneous. To address these challenges, the authors performed an experiment using three measurement platforms (boat, plane, UAV) and multiple sensors to acquire both cloud and image spatial data, which were integrated temporally and spatially. The integration methods improved the accuracy of the resulting digital model by approximately 20 percent.