June 2018 Chapter Meeting
Use of Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (sUAVs) in Post-Earthquake Geotechnical Reconnaissance Following the 2016 Central Italy Earthquakes
Speaker: Kevin W. Franke, PhD, PE | Brigham Young University
When: June 19, 2018 | 5:30 PM
Where: Old Spaghetti Factory | 1910 J St., Sacramento, CA 95811
RSVP at http://www.aegsacto.org/meetings/signup/
Three large earthquakes (M5.9 to M6.5) struck the Mt. Vettore region of the Central Apennines in Italy between August 24 and October 30 in 2016. The Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance Association (GEER) sent reconnaissance teams to the damaged area twice following these events: after the initial M6.0 in late August, and again after the larger M6.5 event in early December. Challenging terrain and geo-political conditions made traditional engineering reconnaissance of the affected villages and slope/rock slopes difficult, if not impossible. Researchers on the GEER team implemented an innovative solution to deploy sUAVs to collect aerial imagery from the sites of interest. This presentation summarizes the equipment that was used, the type of data that was collected, and the models of damaged sites that resulted from these efforts. Overall, the use of sUAVs in the post-earthquake reconnaissance was a success, and established a new standard for geotechnical reconnaissance following an extreme event.