Evaluation of UAV- and GNSS-Based DEMs for Earthwork Volume

Road planning and construction is a complex and time consuming process. One of the most important components in this process is estimating earthwork. Resolution of DEM, which is commonly used in road planning stage, directly affects success of earthworks estimation and construction costs. Within the scope of this study, capabilities of two different data collection systems (UAV and GNSS) were compared for DEM generation. In the study, two sets of DEMs of Bursa Technical University Kestel campus area were produced using both UAV- and GNSS-based methods. Then, cut and fill volumes were compared with considering UAV-based DEM and GNSS-based DEM depending on reference plane for three different roads. According to NRTK-GNSS-based surveying results, point density was obtained as 35 point/ha, while UAV-based surveying point density was computed as \({\sim } 234{,}385\) point/ha. Using UAV-based DEM as a reference plane, it was found that the volumes of excavations and embankments were very close to each other when the average excavation per unit (i.e., 1 m) road length was calculated.