From September 2016 to February 2017, Santiago Zazo has carried out a stay, as a pre-doctoral researcher, at the Hydraulics Laboratory of the Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture (Faculty of Engineering) of the University of Beira Interior (Covilhã, Portugal), under the supervision of Dr. Cristina Maria Sena Fael and Dr. Pedro Gabriel Almeida. (http://www.ubi.pt).
The stay consisted on the application of Artificial Vision techniques to study the evolution of fluvial morphodynamics in meandriform rivers and channels. Specifically, SfM (Structure from Motion) was used in order to 3D reconstruct the terrain through digital images acquired with a commercial DSLR camera. Two research lines were derived, the first one is focused on the transport of sediments as well as the morphodynamic changes on the thalweg; and the second one is focused on the river bank protection against fluvial erosion, where the geometry of the protection elements were analysed in relation with the morphodynamic of the thalweg. As a result, high-resolution 3D geometric models were obtained (point density: ≈2-3 points/mm², accuracy: ≈2 mm) as well as high resolution orthoimages (pixel size: 1 millimetre).
