GPS Surveys Within Falls Creek For Aerial Photography

  • Ms Chee Lee, RMIT University, Australia
  • Dr David Silcock, RMIT University, Australia
  • Mr Lucas Holden, RMIT University, Australia
  • This paper details GPS campaigns undertaken within the Falls Creek Ski Resort, for control surveys, photo control coordination, elevation profiles and appropriate field checks. Campaigns were completed in snow and no snow conditions. The required post-processing and results of rigorous network adjustment are also presented. The logistical problems of coordinating survey marks in areas of sparse survey control, deploying photo control targets over snow for image acquisition and working in difficult weather conditions are discussed. The imagery acquired, in both winter (snow cover) and spring (no snow cover), was later used to create surface models to estimate snow depth in an areal manner. The required positional accuracies for the photogrammetric validation points were <20mm for both Easting and Northing (MGA94), and <50mm for elevation (AHD). Static GPS was used to establish control points. Rapid-static GPS was mainly used to coordinate photo control targets in the aerial image capture. RTK GPS was undertaken to collect the majority of the elevation profiles. GPS static data was network adjusted from simultaneous state-wide GPSnet data (Land Victoria’s GPS network) using MGA94 coordinates derived from the ARGN (Penna et al. 2005). All GPS processing and network adjustments were performed using Trimble Geomatics Office. Ausgeiod98 was used to model AHD elevations since no AHD benchmark was available. Network adjusted control marks agreed well with independent checks obtained from the online AusPOS GPS data processing service. All network adjustment residuals were <15mm for Easting and Northing, and <30mm for elevation, which satisfied the required accuracies.