Bulletin of Engineering Geology and the Environment (2020) 79:4717–4732

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10064-020-01870-3

ORIGINAL PAPER

A photogrammetric method for laboratory-scale investigation on 3D

landslide dam topography
Hao Wu 1 & De-feng Zheng 2 & Yan-jun Zhang 3 & Dong-yang Li 1 & Ting-kai Nian 1

Received: 10 January 2020 / Accepted: 28 May 2020 / Published online: 13 June 2020
# Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020

Abstract
Topography is a crucial characteristic reflecting the stability status of a landslide dam. The methods for measuring landslide dam
topography in a laboratory-scale test study are currently operator dependent, time-consuming, or only applicable to the measure-
ment of the two-dimensional section. In this paper, a laboratory-scale photogrammetric method based on the structure from motion
(SfM) technique was proposed to measure the three-dimensional (3D) topography of a landslide dam. The SfM technique, which is
a revolutionary, low-cost, user-friendly computer vision technique, was employed for reconstructing a landslide dam 3D computer
model. A scientific method to determine the topography parameters of a landslide dam was put forward. Meanwhile, two materials
with different particle sizes were used to simulate the formation process of the landslide dam in the laboratory-scale. Then, the
measurement results of the two materials were compared. Five parameters of a landslide dam topography with 100 parallel
measurement results for each parameter were obtained. The results show that the SfM technique could build a high-quality 3D
point cloud in a laboratory scale. The proposed method of determining the topography parameters of a landslide dam was useful and
has low measurement uncertainty. The material type affected the sparse density of the point cloud and then affected the measure-
ment uncertainty of landslide dam topography parameters. The measurement uncertainty of the gravel-type landslide dam was
significantly higher than that of the sand-type landslide dam. This research contributes to promoting the application of a photo-
grammetric method based on the SfM technique in geotechnical engineering laboratory-scale tests.

Keywords Photogrammetric method . Structure from motion technique . Landslide dam disaster . Three-dimensional
topography . Non-contact measurement

* De-feng Zheng Introduction

defengzheng@lnnu.edu.cn
* Ting-kai Nian Landslide, rockfall, and debris flow, caused by slope instabil-
tknian@dlut.edu.cn ity, are the most common mass movements in mountainous
Hao Wu areas throughout the world, threatening the safety of human
haowugeot@mail.dlut.edu.cn life and property (Nian et al. 2020; Sassa et al. 2015). The
mass movements may move into valleys and block rivers,
Yan-jun Zhang
yjzhang_cgs@163.com resulting in the formation of landslide dams (Casagli and
Ermini 1999; Costa and Schuster 1988; Shrestha and
Dong-yang Li
ldygeot@mail.dlut.edu.cn
Nakagawa 2016; Zhang et al. 2013). Landslide dams consist
of a mixture of soil and rock and may fail in a short time,
1
School of Civil Engineering and State Key Laboratory of Coastal and causing catastrophic disasters for defenseless downstream
Offshore Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, No. 2 areas (Costa and Schuster 1988; Cui et al. 2009; Dai et al.
Linggong Road, High-tech Zone, Dalian 116024, Liaoning, China 2005; Kidyaeva et al. 2017). Assessing the stability status of
2
School of Urban and Environmental Science, Liaoning Normal a landslide dam in a limited time is an important task.
University, No. 850, Huanghe Road, Shahekou Zone, However, the stability evaluation cannot be carried out be-
Dalian 116029, Liaoning, China
cause parameters, such as geotechnical physical and mechan-
3
Wuhan Center, China Geological Survey ical properties, are incapable of being obtained in a short time.
(Central South China Innovation Center for Geosciences),
Wuhan 430205, Hubei, China
Fortunately, previous studies showed that the stability status
4718
of a landslide dam is associated with its three-dimensional
(3D) topography (Donnarumma et al. 2013; Ermini and
Casagli 2003; Nian et al. 2018; Korup 2005; Tacconi
Stefanelli et al. 2016). It is, therefore, very important to carry
out laboratory experimental studies on the 3D topography
evolution of landslide dams. However, the primary problem
raised in experimental studies is how accurate measuring the
3D landslide dam topography.
At present, the measurement methods in geotechnical lab-
oratory experimental studies are of two main classes: contact
measurement method and non-contact measurement method
(Li and Zhang 2018; White et al. 2001; White et al. 2003). For
example, in terms of the contact measurement method, grid
lines are widely used as measuring instruments to measure the
landslide dam topography in laboratory flume experiments
(Awal et al. 2009; Jiang et al. 2017; Niu et al. 2012; Sharif
et al. 2015; Yang et al. 2015). Despite being a simple and
effective approach, the measured results from this approach
are relatively inaccurate. Because landslide dam topography is
very complex, it is difficult to obtain 3D landslide dam topo-
graphical characteristics through the methods mentioned
above. Moreover, the contact measurement may cost time,
and the target object status may be subjected to change during
measurement.
Non-contact measurement refers to the process of
obtaining the surface parameter information of an object with-
out touching the surface of the object through photoelectric,
electromagnetic, and other technologies (Son and Kim 2017;
Tran et al. 2017). The non-contact measurement method is
more rapid than the contact measurement method and reduces
operator dependence. At present, the non-contact measure-
ment method based on point cloud reconstruction has been
widely used in civil engineering site surveys (Liu et al.
2014). This method has achieved a revolutionary technologi-
cal breakthrough from a single point measurement to full
three-dimensional surface measurements. For example, appli-
cations in landslide deformation monitoring (Teza et al. 2007),
tunnels excavation geometry inspection (Pejić 2013), and
slope stability and rockfall runout studies (Salvini et al.
2013) have been widely reported. However, photoelectricity
devices used in non-contact measurements are extremely cost-
ly and are not economical to use in the indoor laboratory.
Moreover, due to the limitations of equipment size and the
experimental environment, these devices may not be applica-
ble in the laboratory-scale study.
Because of its low cost and high efficiency, the structure
from motion (SfM) technique, which is a computer vision
technique for high-resolution topographic reconstruction,
has been rapidly developed for applications in geological
engineering (Westoby et al. 2012), such as field investiga-
tions of rock slope characterization (Riquelme et al. 2016;
Török et al. 2018), tunnel surfaces monitoring (García-
Luna et al. 2019), and the quantification of the morphology
H. Wu et al.
of landscape evolution morphology quantification (Rossi
et al. 2018; Saito et al. 2018). Recently, the photogrammet-
ric method based on the SfM technique has brought a rev-
olutionary breakthrough for the experimental study.
Wójcik et al. (2018) described how the photogrammetric
method was applied to measure the repose angle of granu-
lar materials. Masoodi et al. (2018) used Kinect which was
commonly used for human body tracing and indoor
mapping to monitor seepage erosion of riverbank by
laboratory experiments. Galland et al. (2016) described in
great detail the implementation of an open source SfM
program (MicMac) for topography monitoring on labora-
tory experiments of magma emplacement in the crust and
tectonic deformation. Schmiedel et al. (2017, 2019) inves-
tigated the relationship between intrusion shape and host
material strength and deformation mode according to the
time series of topographic maps measured by the photo-
grammetric method, which was proposed by Galland et al.
(2016). Although this method appears promising and pro-
duces high-resolution results, it has surprisingly rarely
been used in the laboratory-scale landslide dam topogra-
phy investigation. There has been no detailed investigation
of measurement error analysis when the photogrammetric
method is applied in a laboratory-scale experimental study.
To implement the SfM technique in a laboratory-scale study
of landslide dam topography measurement, three issues must be
addressed. (a) According to our previous experiments on the 3D
topography of landslide dams (Wu et al. 2020), it is difficult to
quantify the length, width, and height of a landslide dam due to
the irregular accumulation of granular materials. There is an ab-
solute randomness in the measurement results. Thus, a system-
atic scientific method for measuring the acquired landslide dam
topography needs to be determined. (b) There has been no de-
tailed investigation of measurement error analysis using the pho-
togrammetric method based on the SfM technique. Although the
SfM technique is widely used in regional site surveys, the accu-
racy of the measurement method still lacks evaluation when it is
used in a laboratory-scale study. (c) Wójcik et al. (2018) found
that material characteristics (e.g., texture and grain size) of the
object under measure affected the quality of point cloud recon-
struction of the SfM technique and further directly affect the
accuracy of the measured results. Hence, the effects of geotech-
nical materials with different particle sizes on the measurement
results should be recognized.
This paper is aimed at proposing a photogrammetric meth-
od for scientifically measuring landslide dam topography at
the laboratory scale. To achieve this goal, first, experimental
equipment was built, and the layout of the equipment and the
photo acquisition approach were illustrated. Then, a scientific
method to determine the topographic parameters of a landslide
dam was proposed. Third, the measurement method was test-
ed by materials with two different particle sizes (fine sand
group and the coarse gravel group). Finally, two indexes
A photogrammetric method for laboratory-scale investigation on 3D landslide dam topography 4719

(point cloud density and measurement uncertainty) were used overlapping photos; thus, it differs fundamentally from
to evaluate the accuracy of the measurement results of the conventional photogrammetry in that, without the need
proposed method. to specify a priori, a network of targets that have
known 3D positions is automatically obtained.
The schematic diagram of the SfM technique is shown in
Fig. 1. Assuming that the imaging point of the spatial point
Materials and methods CPi is CPi-n and the corresponding homogeneous coordinates
are CPi = (xw, yw, zw, 1)T and CPi-n = (u, v, 1)T, the following
General description of the structure from motion mathematical model was given by the previous study (Sturm
technique principle and Triggs 1996):
2 3
The structure from motion (SfM) technique is an imag- 2 3 2 32 3 xw
ing technique for estimating 3D structures from two- u f =d x 0 u0 r1 r2 r3 lx 6 7
yw 7
dimensional photo sequences that are used in the field λ4 v 5 ¼ 4 0 f =d y v0 5 4 r 4 r5 r6 l y 56
4 zw 5
1 0 0 1 r7 r8 r9 lz
of computer vision (Sturm and Triggs 1996). The 3D 1
structure (point locations) and motion (camera locations) 2 3 2 3
xw xw
can be recovered from the photo measurements. The 6 yw 7 6 yw 7
SfM technique simultaneously calculates the geometry ¼ K ðRt Þ6 7 6 7
4 zw 5 ¼ M 4 zw 5
of the scene and the positions and orientations of the
1 1
camera using a highly redundant, iterative bundle ad-
justment procedure based on a set of multiple ð1Þ

Fig. 1 Schematic diagram of the structure from motion technique. CPi is the number i spatial point on the experiment target. CPi-n is the number i
imaging point on the number n photo, which corresponds to the number i spatial point
4720
λ is the non-zero scaling factor, which is called the projec-
tion depth; R and t are the external parameter matrixes, which
represent the transformation relationship between the camera
coordinate system and the world coordinate system. The rota-
tion matrix R is composed of r1~r9, and the translation vector t
is composed of lx, ly, and lz. K is the camera’s internal param-
eter matrix, including the focal length f, the main point coor-
dinates (u0, v0), and the pixel physical size dx, dy, and M =
K(Rt) is the projection matrix.
Experimental scheme
The performance of the photogrammetric method applying in
the laboratory-scale tests was investigated by two materials
with different particle sizes, which were the fine sand group
and the coarse gravel group. The repose angles of the fine sand
group and the coarse gravel group were 35° and 45°, respec-
tively. Figure 2 shows the grain size distributions of the two
different materials. The particle size range of the fine sand
group was 0.1–2 mm. The median diameter of the fine sand
group was 0.60 mm. The specific gravity of the fine sand
group was 2.28. The non-uniform coefficient and curvature
coefficient of the fine sand group were 2.19 and 0.96, respec-
tively. The particle size range of the gravel group was 2–
20 mm. The median diameter of the gravel group was
9.42 mm. The specific gravity of the gravel group was 2.50.
The non-uniform coefficient and curvature coefficient of the
gravel group were 1.66 and 1.03, respectively. In the
Fig. 2 Particle size distributions of two different materials used in the
tests. d10 means that the mass of soil particles smaller than this particle
size accounts for 10% of the total mass of soil particles and is also known
as effective particle size. d30 means that the mass of soil particles smaller
than this particle size accounts for 30% of the total mass of soil particles.
d50 means that the mass of soil particles smaller than this particle size
accounts for 50% of the total mass of soil particles and is also known as
median particle size. d60 means that the mass of soil particles smaller than
this particle size accounts for 60% of the total mass of soil particles and is
also known as the control particle size
H. Wu et al.
experiment, the same volume, 0.02 m3, of the two materials
was used to form landslide dams, so as to eliminate the influ-
ence of the measured object volume on the evaluation of the
measured result.
The layout of the experiment equipment is shown in Fig. 3.
The equipment mainly included the landslide dam simulation
system and the photo acquisition system.
The landslide dam simulation system consisted of two
parts: a landslide simulation part and a landslide dam-
forming part. The landslide simulation part was mainly com-
posed of an angle adjustment unit, a lifting motor, and a stor-
age tank that consists of a bottom plate, two side plates, a
cover plate, and a baffle plate. These plates were able to move
freely and are assembled so that the position and size of the
storage tank can be changed. To simulate different slope slid-
ing surface angles, continuous angular changes from 0° to 90°
could be achieved via the angle adjustment unit and the lifting
motor. The storage tank was used to store the test materials.
The landslide dam-forming part was 4.6 m long, 0.3 m wide,
and 0.2 m high and is made of plexiglass. The landslide dam-
forming part was set perpendicular to the landslide simulation
at the downstream end to receive the landslide mass
forming the landslide dam. The landslide dam-forming
part was also installed with an angle adjustment unit so
that the angle can be changed from 0° to 12° to simu-
late different valley bed inclinations.
The photo acquisition system in the experiments included a
small motion camera, an industrial personal computer, a
shooting path guide rail, and control points labels, as shown
in Fig. 3. The GoPro Hero 4 Black camera was utilized in the
tests. The nominal focal length of the camera was 3 mm. The
pixel size of the camera was 0.00155 mm (sensor size of 6.2 ×
4.65 mm). The GoPro Hero 4 Black camera had several photo
capture modes. In this study, the “Medium” mode was uti-
lized. The vertical and horizontal FOV of the “Medium” photo
capture mode were 94.4° and 122.6°, respectively. The photo
size was 7 MP (3000 × 2500 pixel). The computer configura-
tion used in this study was i7-6700K, 4.00 GHz, NVIDIA
GeForce GTX 970 2 GB. The shooting path guide rail was
composed of steel wire. The camera was attached to the shoot-
ing path guide rail and can move freely along the shooting
path guide rail. Marks, which were used as the camera shoot-
ing station, were made every 20 mm in the shooting path
guide rail. The control point labels, which were composed of
16-mm squares, were arranged on the landslide dam-forming
part (as shown in Fig. 3). A total of 27 control points with
known coordinate were randomly distributed on the control
point labels. The control points in this paper served two pur-
poses. On the one hand, the control points were used to realign
the acquired photos, which ensured accurate calculation of the
camera position in the custom coordinate system. On the other
hand, the coordinates of the control points were used to verify
the accuracy of the measurement results.
A photogrammetric method for laboratory-scale investigation on 3D landslide dam topography
Fig. 3 Layout of the experiment
equipment. a Material is put into
the storage tank before testing. b
A landslide dam forming
As shown in Fig. 3b, the camera was fixed on the shooting
path guide rail with a 300-mm distance from the flume bot-
tom. A photo was taken approximately every 20 mm under a
fixed lighting condition. A total of 21 photos were taken dur-
ing each entire measuring procedure. Based on the captured
photos, a 3D point cloud of the landslide dam was reconstruct-
ed by the SfM technique. Even if the same object is measured
in the same measurement method, the results of multiple mea-
surements may be different. This is because an occasional
error cannot be avoided. In order to evaluate the accuracy of
the measurement results by statistical analysis method, multi-
ple measurements of the same measurement object were re-
quired. Since the occasional errors may exist in the processes
of photo capture, point cloud generation, and parameter mea-
surement, each process was repeated 10 times in this study.
Thus, a total of 10 landslide dam computer models expressed
by n = {1, …, 10} were formed after 10 times of photo capture
processes and 3D point cloud generation processes. For each
landslide dam computer model, the parameter measuring pro-
cess was also repeated 10 times, according to an m = {1, …,
10} repetition scheme. Thus, for each landslide dam parame-
ter, 100 parallel measurement results were obtained. In the
“Data evaluation index” section, the obtained results were
further statistically analyzed.
In photogrammetric applications, a GoPro Hero 4 Black
camera has many advantages from a measurement perspec-
tive: it is compact, flexible, portable low-cost, and can be used
in complex conditions. Conversely, the disadvantage is that
the wide-angle lenses generate a distorting effect known as the
“Fish-Eye” effect (Balletti et al. 2014; Bolognesi et al. 2015).
Because of loss of output accuracy, the use of the GoPro Hero
4 Black camera in photogrammetry is not common. In this
4721
study, as the distance from the object is very small, which is
approximately 300 mm (as shown in Fig. 3), the strong dis-
tortion effects are heightened. To ensure the accuracy of photo
processing results, the inner orientation elements and optical
aberration of the GoPro Hero 4 Black camera should be
checked for measurement purposes. The camera calibration
work is mainly to obtain the following two groups of data:
(1) interior orientation elements: the principal points coordi-
nate (x0, y0) and the focal length of the camera (fx, fy); (2)
optical distortion: radial distortion (k1, k2, k3) and decentering
distortion (p1, p2). The main camera correction methods in-
clude direct linear transformation, bundle adjustment, Tsai
two-stage technique, and plane grid method (Gai et al.
2018). In this paper, the plane grid method was used for cam-
era calibration. The checkerboard grid was used as the cali-
bration plane to shoot the checkerboard grid images from
different angles, following the steps of the literature (Balletti
et al. 2014). The distances of taking photos should be evenly
spaced and vary greatly in general, and a total of 14
images were taken. The program of camera calibration
was compiled on MATLAB. The results of camera cal-
ibration are listed in Table 1.
Taking a set of photographs as an example, the photo-
graphs with strong distortion were converted to normal photos
(as shown in Fig. 4).
Photogrammetric procedure
Figure 5 presents the procedure of the photogrammetric meth-
od. As shown, the measurement method is based on the se-
quential application of the following four main steps:
4722
Table 1 The results of camera
calibration The camera parameters
Focal length (fx, fy)
Coordinates of principal point (x0, y0)
Optical distortion (k1, k2, k3, p1, p2)
Step 1: Preparatory work. To implement the photogrammet-
ric method, a user-defined coordinate system had to
be determined in advance. In this paper, the X- and Y-
axes were on the plane of the flume, the Z-axis was
parallel to the normal vector of the flume, and the
coordinate origin was located downstream of the riv-
erbed. Thus, a right-handed rectangular space coor-
dinate system was established by taking the direction
from the downstream to the upstream of the flume as
the positive direction of the X-axis (as shown in Fig.
3b). Enough control points need to be placed in the
measurement area, and the 3D coordinates of control
points should be measured. Additionally, a fixed fo-
cus camera should be selected, and its lens should be
corrected before performing the measurement. Good
lighting is also required to achieve better quality of
the results, parallel views with moving cameras over
a relatively flat and extensive object with respect of
the area shot by the camera.
Step 2: Acquiring photos. As a landslide dam occupies a
relatively large flat space, the photos should be taken
as a parallel view with a motion camera on the
shooting path guide rail, which was described in
detail in the “Experimental scheme” section. For
reconstructing the 3D model, two adjacent photos
should overlap at least 60%, and each photo should
contain at least 4 control points. It is worth noting
that acquiring more photos can reconstruct a better
3D model. Details such as textures and gaps can be
reconstructed clearly.
Fig. 4 Photograph distortion calibration: a photographs with strong distortion, b normal photographs after calibration
H. Wu et al.
The calibration results/pixel
(1.5607e3, 1.5607e3)
(− 63.6139, 5.3674)
(− 2.6815e−1, 1.1462e−1, − 3.6827e−2, 4.2210e−04, 9.0325)
Step 3: Building 3D computer model. The photographs ob-
tained from the second step may be distorted, which
has an impact on 3D modeling. Thus, it is necessary
to adjust the distortion of the photo, then determine
the control points in each photo artificially and input
the space coordinates of the control points. Next, the
sparse point cloud and the dense point cloud of the
measured object are reconstructed using the com-
mercial software Agisoft PhotoScan (Agisoft
2016), which is a 3D scanning software package
developed by the Agisoft company, Russia. For es-
tablishing the 3D model of the measured object ac-
curately, the points outside the study area and the
noise points can be deleted in advance. Then, the
spatial characteristics of the point cloud are derived,
and a best fit 3D geometry is generated by using
Kriging interpolation method, which configures the
geometric parameters of a given solid so that its ge-
ometry best fits a tested point cloud.
Step 4: Measuring topography parameters. The topography
of the landslide dam is not regular, and different
results may be obtained from each measurement.
Therefore, the measurement criteria, which were de-
scribed in detail in the “Parameter definition and
acquisition” section, need to be defined at first.
Besides, in order to reduce the measurement error,
it is necessary to increase the measurement times.
Two indexes (point cloud density and measurement
uncertainty) were defined to evaluate the accuracy of
the measurement results. The two indexes for
A photogrammetric method for laboratory-scale investigation on 3D landslide dam topography 4723

Fig. 5 Procedure of
photogrammetric method

evaluating the accuracy of the measurement results
were described in detail in the “Data evaluation in-
dex” section.
Parameter definition and acquisition
As shown in Fig. 6a, the simplified topography of a landslide
dam can be defined by the following eight parameters (Wu
et al. 2020). H is the height of the landslide dam and indicates
the distance between the top surface and the bottom surface.
The top length of a longitudinal section of the landslide dam is
defined as Lt, and the bottom length is defined as Lb. θ is
defined as the valley bed slope, which is the angle between
the plane where the riverbed lies and the horizontal plane.
There are two ways to describe the angles of the upstream
and downstream slopes of the landslide dam. One way is to
define the angle as the angle between the surface of the up-
stream or downstream slope of the landslide dam and the
plane of the valley bed, which we call the inner angle.
Another way is to define the angle as the angle between the
surface of the upstream or downstream slope of the landslide
dam and the horizontal plane, which we call the outer angle.
βd and βu are defined as the inner angles of the downstream
slope and upstream slope, respectively, while βd’ and βu’ are

Fig. 6 Methods of parameter

definition and longitudinal
section simplification. a
Parameter definition method
based on simplified longitudinal
section of a landslide dam. b A
method for simplify the actual
longitudinal section of a landslide
dam
4724 H. Wu et al.

defined as the outer angles of the downstream slope and up-  

H
stream slope, respectively. The outer and inner angles are β d ¼ arctan
L
 1
geometrically related. Five parameters, therefore, can define ð2Þ
H
the topography of a landslide dam. β u ¼ arctan
However, the topography of a landslide dam cannot be as L2
regular as the simplified in Fig. 6a. For many granular mate-
rials (e.g., sands and gravels), there is a general tendency for
the accumulation body to curve at the top and have bulk ma-
Data evaluation index
terial accumulate at its base, as shown in Fig. 6b. The curved
top of the landslide dam model (as shown in Fig. 6b) differs
Digital photo processing, 3D modeling, and point cloud gen-
substantially from the simplified flat top (as shown in Fig. 6a).
eration entail certain errors that may affect the quality of
It is, therefore, difficult to define the top length (Lt) of the
photos and the accuracy of measurement results (Wójcik
landslide dam model. Furthermore, the loose material of the
et al. 2018). In this study, a total of 10 landslide dam computer
landslide dam toe lies a great distance from the central of the
models expressed by n = {1, …, 10} were formed. For each
landslide dam (as shown in Fig. 6b), which may, therefore,
landslide dam computer model, parameter measuring proce-
underestimate the inner angles of the downstream slope and
dure was repeated 10 times, according to an m = {1, …, 10}
upstream slope (βd and βu). For these various reasons, to sci-
repetition scheme. Thus, for each landslide dam parameter,
entifically measure the parameters of landslide dam topogra-
100 parallel measurement results were obtained.
phy, a method for simplifying the actual longitudinal section
Accordingly, the accuracy of the measurement results was
of a landslide dam was proposed. The following provisions
evaluated using two indexes, which were point cloud density
were made in this study (as shown in Fig. 6b):
and measurement uncertainty. The point cloud density was
used to compare the difference of measurement results be-
(1) A total of 10–15% of the bottom region of the landslide
tween sands and gravels. The measurement uncertainty was
dam model is omitted.
used to analyze the accuracy of the measurement results of
(2) A total of 15–20% of the top region of the landslide dam
five landslide dam parameters.
model is omitted.
(3) The remaining 65–75% of the point cloud is the actual
representation of the upstream and downstream surface.
Point cloud density
The best fitting line of the remaining part is used as the
upstream and downstream surface of the landslide dam
Point cloud density is an important attribute of SfM point
model.
cloud data, which reflects the characteristics of point space
(4) The angles between the two fitting lines and the valley
distribution, while the characteristics of point space distribu-
bed are defined as the inner angles of the downstream
tion directly reflect the spatial distribution and characteristics
slope and upstream slope (βd and βu).
of measurement objects (Clapuyt et al. 2016; Westoby et al.
(5) The valley bed intersects the two fitting lines at two
2012). The high-quality point cloud density is more conducive
points. The distance between the two points is the bottom
to reconstruct a high-quality measurement model. The point
length (Lb) of a landslide dam.
cloud density was defined in this study according to Formula
(6) A straight line parallel to the valley bed and across the
(3):
highest point of the landslide dam is made. This straight
line intersects the two fitting lines at two points. The N n;k
Dn;k ¼ ð3Þ
distance between the two points is the top length (Lt) of S n;k
a landslide dam.
(7) The dam height (H) is the vertical distance from the where Dn,k is the point cloud density of the landslide dams.
valley bed to the highest point. Nn,k is the number of points composing the 3D point cloud,
and Sn,k is the surface area of the landslide dam. When k = 1, it
The parameters of Lb, Lt, and H can be measured directly means sand; when k = 2, it means gravel. n = {1, …, 10}
on the landslide dam model. However, the parameters of βd indicates 10 landslide dam computer models.
and βu cannot be measured directly. According to the topog- From formula (3), the point cloud density (Dn,k) can be
raphy shown in Fig. 6b, the parameters of βd and βu can be understood as the number of points within the area of the
expressed by the following (Eq. (2)): target object unit. When Dn,k is larger, the point cloud quality
is higher, and the target object is well reconstructed.
A photogrammetric method for laboratory-scale investigation on 3D landslide dam topography 4725

Measurement uncertainty The parameters H, Lt, Lb, L1, and L2 were determined di-
rectly by measuring the landslide dam 3D computer model.
The measurement uncertainty is the evaluation of the magni- According to formula (4), the measurement uncertainties of
tude range that characterizes the actual value of a measure- these parameters can be expressed by the following (Eq. (5)):
ment. It is a scientific description of the uncertainty degree of sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
1  2
measurement results affected by measurement error.
uðH Þn¼f1;…;10g ¼ ∑m H i −H
Specifically, measurement uncertainty quantification repre- mðm−1Þ i¼1
sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
sents the comprehensive distribution range of random error
1  2
and systematic error. According to the standard uncertainty uðLt Þn¼f1;…;10g ¼ ∑m L t −L t
mðm−1Þ i¼1 i
determined by the error propagation formula (root-mean- sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
square error), the measurement uncertainty can be estimated 1  2
uðLb Þn¼f1;…;10g ¼ ∑m i¼1 Lbi −Lb
ð5Þ
as follows: mðm−1Þ
sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi  2
 2 1
1 uðL1 Þn¼f1;…;10g ¼ ∑m i¼1 L1i −L1
uðxÞn¼f1;…;10g ¼ ∑m x i −x ð4Þ mðm−1Þ
mðm−1Þ i¼1 sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
1  2
uðL2 Þn¼f1;…;10g ¼ ∑m i¼1 L2i −L2
where u(x)n denotes the measurement uncertainty of a param- mðm−1Þ
eter. xi indicates measurement result of a parameter. x indi-
cates the average value of the 10 measurement results. n = {1, As βu and βd were determined indirectly by calculating Eq.
…, 10} indicates the number series of the 10 landslide dam (2), the measurement uncertainties of these parameters can be
computer models. m = {1, …, 10} indicates the number series expressed by the following (Eq. (6)):
of 10 parallel measurement results on each landslide dam 3D
computer model.

vffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
u0 12 0 12
u
u H L
¼ t@ 2 A u2 ðL1n Þ @ A u2 ð H n Þ
n 1n
uðβd Þn¼f1;…;10g 2 n¼f1;…;10g þ 2 2 n¼f1;…;10g
H n þ L1n H n þ L1n
vffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi ð6Þ
u0 12 0 12
u
u H L
¼ t@ 2 A u2 ðL2n Þ @ A u2 ð H n Þ
n 2n
uðβu Þn¼f1;…;10g 2 n¼f1;…;10g þ 2 2 n¼f1;…;10g
H n þ L2n H n þ L2n

For a given n series, the final values of the five

sp ðxnm Þ
landslide dam topographic parameters with the measure- upn ¼f1;…;10g ¼ pffiffiffiffi ð9Þ
ment uncertainties are equal to x  uðxÞc. x is the aver- m
age value of the morphological parameters of a land- where Sp(xnm) indicates the standard deviation.
slide dam. uc is measurement uncertainty that can be
expressed in the formula below:

∑ni¼1 uðxÞn wn Results

uð x Þ c ¼ ð7Þ
∑ni¼1 wn
Validation
where wn indicates weighted mean, for a given series;
wn is expressed by the following (Eq. (8)): Ten of the 27 control points were selected to verify the preci-
sion of the SfM technique measurement results. Taking one of
1
wn¼f1;…;10g ¼ ð8Þ the 20 landslide dam 3D computer models as an example,
u2pn
Table 2 shows a comparison of the actual coordinates and
the measured coordinates of the 10 control points. The mea-
where upn indicates measurement uncertainty of the sured coordinates were found to be relatively close to the
measurement average in a given series, which is defined actual coordinates. The root-mean-square errors (RMSEs) of
by the following (Eq. (9)): the X, Y, and Z coordinates were 0.151 mm, 0.171 mm, and
4726 H. Wu et al.

Table 2 Comparison of the actual

coordinates and the measured Control Actual coordinates (mm) Measured coordinates (mm) Difference value (mm)
coordinates of the 10 control point
points number X Y Z X Y Z DX DY DZ

CP01 1357.2 303.0 200.0 1357.041 303.087 200.035 − 0.159 0.087 0.035
CP02 1308.7 303.0 200.0 1308.704 303.121 199.942 0.004 0.121 − 0.058
CP03 1244.7 303.0 200.0 1244.452 303.069 199.937 − 0.248 0.069 − 0.063
CP04 1196.2 303.0 200.0 1196.302 303.126 199.955 0.102 0.126 − 0.045
CP05 1373.5 − 8.0 200.0 1373.446 − 8.036 199.943 − 0.054 − 0.036 − 0.057
CP06 1293.5 − 8.0 200.0 1293.375 − 8.206 199.839 − 0.125 − 0.206 − 0.161
CP07 1197.0 − 8.0 200.0 1196.911 − 8.257 199.791 − 0.089 − 0.257 − 0.209
CP08 1116.2 303.0 200.0 1116.083 303.256 199.945 − 0.117 0.256 − 0.055
CP09 1132.5 − 8.0 200.0 1132.705 − 8.125 199.920 0.205 − 0.125 − 0.080
CP10 1067.7 303.0 200.0 1067.885 303.183 199.936 0.185 0.183 − 0.064
RMSE 0.151 0.171 0.066

0.066 mm, respectively, which were all less than 0.2 mm. It
can be concluded that the landslide dam 3D computer model
reconstructed by the SfM technique has high precision.
Additionally, as the CPLs were arranged on the landslide
dam-forming part, the measuring materials had no effect on
the measurement of the control point coordinates.
As shown in Fig. 7a–d, the sparse point cloud and the dense
point cloud can be generated by the SfM technique, following
the steps described in the “Photogrammetric procedure” sec-
tion. It can be observed that different measuring materials
affect the number of points. Based on the 3D point cloud,
the landslide dam 3D computer model can be reconstructed,

Fig. 7 The SfM technique is applied in a laboratory-scale test study: a of a gravel-type landslide, e reconstruction of the sand-type landslide dam
generation of a sparse point cloud of a sand-type landslide, b generation 3D computer model, and f reconstruction of the gravel-type landslide dam
of a sparse point cloud of a gravel-type landslide, c generation of a dense 3D computer model
point cloud of a sand-type landslide, d generation of a dense point cloud
A photogrammetric method for laboratory-scale investigation on 3D landslide dam topography
as shown in Fig. 7e, f. The parameters of landslide dam to-
pography can be measured based on the 3D computer model.
By using the computer modeling model (as shown in Fig.
7e, f), any position of interest can be extracted for specific
analysis. However, it is almost difficult to measure the com-
plete surface of a landslide dam by traditional contact mea-
surement methods. To verify the reliability of the measured
results of the computer modeling model, the height of the
adjacent bank and the opposite bank of the landslide dam
was selected for comparison of the measured results between
the photogrammetric measurement on the computer modeling
model and direct measurement on the prototype model. To
measure on the prototype model directly, transparent grid pa-
pers were pasted on both sides of the plexiglass flume before
an experiment. After the experiment, the longitudinal profiles
of the adjacent bank and the opposite bank of a landslide dam
are shown in Fig. 8. The size of the adjacent bank and the
opposite bank of the landslide dam obtained from the test can
be measured through the transparent grid paper and steel ruler.
Figure 9 indicates the discrepancies between the two
measurement methods (measured on the prototype mod-
el and measured on the computer modeling model). It
can be observed from Fig. 9 that the results obtained by
the two methods are in good agreement. Due to the
limited data points measured on the prototype model,
the measured contour lines of the adjacent bank and
the opposite bank of the landslide dam were not smooth
enough. However, the data points acquired by point
cloud were abundant. As a consequence, the contour
lines of the adjacent bank and the opposite bank of
the landslide dam extracted from the computer modeling
model correspond more to the actual condition.
Fig. 8 The longitudinal profiles
of the landslide dam obtained by
experiments: a the longitudinal
profiles of the adjacent bank of
landslide dam composed by fine
sand; b the longitudinal profiles
of the opposite bank of landslide
dam composed by fine sand; c the
longitudinal profiles of the
adjacent bank of landslide dam
composed by coarse gravel; d the
longitudinal profiles of the
opposite bank of landslide dam
composed by coarse gravel
4727
Parameter analysis
Two indexes, point cloud density and measurement uncertain-
ty, which are described in the “Data evaluation index” section,
are analyzed in this section.
The surface areas of 20 landslide dam 3D computer models
and the densities of the sparse and dense point cloud of the
landslide dams are listed in Table 3. The average surface area
of the 10 gravel-type landslide dam 3D computer models was
1.4 times that of the sand type. The average density of the
sparse point cloud of the sand-type landslide dam, 72.835 ×
10−3/mm2, was almost 3.5 times that of the gravel-type land-
slide dam, 20.525 × 10−3/mm2. In contrast, the average densi-
ties of the dense point cloud of the two type landslide dams
almost coincide, which were 45.266/mm2 and 46.381/mm2,
respectively. The reason for the two densities of the dense
point cloud was similar may be that the same SfM program
was used in this study. The density of dense point clouds may
be only related to the SfM algorithm. It can be concluded that
the density of the sparse point cloud was significantly corre-
lated with the particle size of the geotechnical materials; how-
ever, the density of the dense point cloud was independent of
the particle size of geotechnical materials.
Although the material type has no significant effect on the
density of the dense point cloud, it may affect the measurement
uncertainty. According to Eqs. (4–9), 10 groups of the measure-
ment values with the uncertainty of the five landslide dam topo-
graphic parameters are shown in Fig. 10. It can be seen from
Fig. 10 that the measurement method proposed in this study had
good applicability in laboratory-scale tests. The measurement
uncertainty was quite small and can meet the requirement of
measuring accuracy. The measurement uncertainties of the top
4728 H. Wu et al.

Fig. 9 The discrepancies between the two measurement methods: a the measurement comparison results of fine sand; b the measurement comparison
results of coarse gravel

and bottom lengths of the gravel- and sand-type landslide dams uncertainties, the measurement uncertainty of the gravel-type
were both less than 4 mm. Among these measurement landslide dam top length was the largest, but it only accounted
for 1% of the top length. The measurement uncertainties of the
inner angle of the gravel and sand-type landslide dam were both
less than 0.5°, which only accounted for 0.5%–1.6% of the mea-
Table 3 The surface areas of 20 landslide dam 3D computer models
and the densities of the sparse and dense point clouds of the landslide dam
sured value (as shown in Fig. 10d, e).
It is a remarkable fact that the height measurement uncer-
Experimental Group Surface area Density of Density of tainties of the two landslide dam types were close and very small,
material number of landslide sparse point dense point which only accounted for 0.2% and 0.16% of the measured
dam (mm2) cloud (10−3/ cloud (/mm2)
mm2) results, respectively (as shown in Fig. 10a). The definition mode
of the landslide dam in this paper led to this result. Compared
Gravel No. 1 534,092 21.363 45.638 with the other geometric parameters, the definition mode of dam
No. 2 524,028 20.094 44.722 height dramatically reduced the measurement uncertainty.
No. 3 532,689 20.539 45.840 Besides, the particle size of granular materials had an effect
No. 4 537,923 20.492 44.427 on the dispersion of the measurement results of the geometric
No. 5 528,175 19.721 46.478 parameters. Except for the parameters of landslide dam height,
No. 6 527,854 20.214 46.017 the dispersion of the other geometric parameters of the gravel-
No. 7 536,720 20.467 45.381 type landslide dam was significantly higher than that of the
No. 8 532,498 21.114 44.885 geometric parameters of the sand-type landslide dam. For ex-
No. 9 538,245 20.823 45.034 ample, the uncertainty of the measured upstream inner angle
No. 10 536,890 20.414 44.241 of a gravel-type landslide dam was 2.7 times that of a sand-
Average 532,911 20.524 45.266 type landslide dam (as shown in Fig. 10d). It can be concluded
Sand No. 1 371,290 72.935 45.830 that materials with larger particle sizes, such as gravel, tending
No. 2 370,430 71.579 47.255 to accumulate in discrete patterns, led to higher uncertainty in
No. 3 363,875 74.658 46.192 measuring their geometric parameters.
No. 4 378,787 71.542 46.417
No. 5 370,234 73.219 46.197
No. 6 368,258 73.269 46.743 Discussion
No. 7 371,292 72.372 46.620
No. 8 369,907 73.256 46.572 The influence of measurement times on
No. 9 367,820 73.136 46.324 measurement uncertainty
No. 10 370,834 72.388 45.665
Average 370,273 72.835 46.381 As a novel measurement method, the measurement uncer-
tainties were investigated in detail through 100 sets of parallel
A photogrammetric method for laboratory-scale investigation on 3D landslide dam topography 4729

Fig. 10 Measurement values with uncertainty of five landslide dam dam, d measurement values with uncertainty of inner angle of landslide
topographic parameters: a measurement values with uncertainty of dam dam upstream, and e measurement values with uncertainty of inner angle
height, b measurement values with uncertainty of top length of landslide of landslide dam downstream
dam, c measurement values with uncertainty of bottom length of landslide

measurement results. However, it is unrealistic to analyze 100
sets of parallel measurement results for one parameter in the
application. The measurement times need to be reduced.
Hence, the influence of measurement times on measurement
uncertainty is discussed in this section.
In order to investigate the possibility of reducing measure-
ment times, a total of 3 landslide dam computer models (n = 3)
were selected randomly from all the datasets collected (n =
10). For each landslide dam computer model, parameter mea-
suring was repeated 10 times, according to an m = {1, …, 10}
repetition scheme. Thus, for each landslide dam parameter, 30
parallel measurement results were obtained. Table 4 shows the
selected measurement results. The results obtained for datasets
of n = 3 were consistent with the results, shown in Fig. 10,
which were produced for the entire data collection within
measurement uncertainty. It can be concluded that a signifi-
cant reduction in the measurement times may not reduce the
reliability of results. It is worth noting that further reduction of
measurement times will certainly reduce reliability of results.
A balance between computational efficiency and reliability of
results is required. In this study, we found that satisfactory
results could be obtained by 30 parallel measurements.
Advantages of the proposed measurement method
The acquisition of the topographic parameters of landslide
dam is often challenging. For example, Awal et al. (2009)
pasted a grid line with a spacing of 10 mm on the sidewall of
a flume with a length of 0.5 m, a width of 0.3 m, and a depth
of 0.5 m. Niu et al. (2012) pasted a grid line with a spacing of

Table 4 The output quantities of the five landslide dam topographic parameters for n = 3 measurement times

Experimental material Measurement results Dam height Top length Bottom Inner angle Inner angle
H/mm Lt/mm length Lb/mm of upstream of downstream
βu/° βd/°

Gravel Average value 147.095 293.773 874.646 27.696 26.165

Measurement uncertainty (±) uc 0.242 3.229 3.274 0.392 0.395
Sand Average value 137.244 279.165 920.383 24.358 22.481
Measurement uncertainty (±) uc 0.142 1.195 2.209 0.191 0.293
4730
0.5 m on the sidewall of a channel with a width of 0.4 m and
a length of 12 m to mark the evolution characteristics of the
landslide dam topography. Sharif et al. (2015) studied the
topography evolution characteristics of the erosion failure
of a landslide dam in a flume with a length, width, and
height of 6.1 m, 0.45 m, and 0.25 m, respectively, using a
grid line with a spacing of 50 mm. Jiang et al. (2017) studied
the process of dam failure by a grid line with an interval of
50 mm in a flume with a length, width, and height of 6 m,
0.3 m, and 0.4 m, respectively. The above studies could only
measure the two-dimensional landslide dam topography
evolution in the laboratory. To measure the 3D landslide
dam topography evolution process, Yang et al. (2015)
installed a plane grid with a spacing of 50 mm in a flume
with a width of 0.3 m and a length of 16 m. However, since
the plane grid is placed inside the flume, it will block the
movement path of the measured object. The previous exper-
imental studies on landslide dam morphology could not
accurately obtain the 3D dam topography. For the first
time, the SfM technique was applied to a laboratory-
scale test to investigate landslide dam topography. In
comparison to the traditional measurement method, this
method may provide the 3D surface topography of the
landslide dam. The above experiments clearly confirmed
that the SfM based measurement method is able to re-
construct the landslide dam 3D model with good accu-
racy. Therefore, this method may greatly promote labo-
ratory research on the characteristics of landslide dam
topography.
The longitudinal section morphology of the landslide
dam was usually defined as trapezoid and triangle
(Chen et al. 2015; Zhao et al. 2018). However, it is
found in this paper that the topography of the landslide
dam was irregular. Thus, the measurement of the topo-
graphic parameters was uncertain. The current work pro-
vided a scientific method to measure the topographic
parameters of the landslide dam for the first time.
According to the proposed measurement method, the
measured topographic parameter dispersion was low.
This measurement method of the topographic parameters
of landslide dams can not only be used in laboratory-
scale model tests but also be extended to the landslide
dam morphology field surveys.
It may be mentioned here that some areas still need to
be further studied. The influence of the particle size of the
geotechnical material on the measurement results was in-
vestigated, but the internal reasons for such influence are
not discussed in depth in this paper. The measurement
uncertainty results are primarily influenced by many fac-
tors (Wójcik et al. 2018), such as photo alignment param-
eters and SfM algorithms. From these aspects, the mea-
surement accuracy of the laboratory-scale test based on
the SfM technique can be further improved.
H. Wu et al.
Conclusions
A measurement method based on the SfM technique was pro-
posed and applied in laboratory-scale experiments. Then, a
scientific method to determine the topography parameters of
a landslide dam was proposed. The measurement method was
tested for two materials with different particle sizes. Each
material was subjected to the 3D computer model reconstruc-
tion for 10 times. For each landslide dam 3D computer model,
measuring procedure was repeated 10 times, which produced
100 parallel output quantities for each parameter of the land-
slide dam topography. Two indexes were used to evaluate the
accuracy of the measurement results of the proposed method.
The following conclusions could be drawn from this study:
(1) The SfM technique could generate high-quality 3D point
cloud data at the laboratory scale. The results show that
the calculated coordinates of the control points are in
good agreement with their actual coordinates. The
RMSEs of the X, Y, and Z coordinates are 0.151 mm,
0.171 mm, and 0.066 mm, respectively, which are all
less than 0.2 mm.
(2) The material type has an effect on the sparse density of
the point cloud and then affects the measurement uncer-
tainty of landslide dam topography parameters. The mea-
surement uncertainty of the gravel-type landslide dam is
significantly higher than that of the sand-type landslide
dam.
(3) A significant reduction in the measurement times may
not reduce the reliability of results by comparing 30 par-
allel measurement results with 100 parallel measurement
results.
This paper promotes the application of the SfM technique-
based photogrammetric measurement method in geotechnical
engineering laboratory-scale tests. Future researches can focus
on further improving measurement accuracy and measure-
ment automation.
Acknowledgments The authors gratefully acknowledged the support
from the National Natural Science Foundation of China
Funding information This research was supported by the National
Natural Science Foundation of China (U1765107, 51879036, 51579032).
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