3D Mapping Approach to Analyze the Evolution of Vegetation Using Multispectral Imagery

Abstract

The 3D simulation for the evolution process of crop types requires the management of large volume of data to make an accurate analysis of functional and structural vegetation characteristics. In fact, current geomatics technologies allow the capture of massive and heterogeneous data with a great spatial resolution. Regarding research advances for precision agriculture applications Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV)-based remote sensing offers great possibilities to acquire field data in a fast and reliable way. The main aim of this paper is twofold: (1) the study of multispectral imaging from UAVs for reflectance maps calculation, (2) 3D mapping and modeling using RGB and multispectral imagery in order to create a 3D NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) point cloud. We are focussed on 4D inspection of olive trees including spatio-temporal data for reflectance change detection in multispectral remote sensing images.