UAV (Drone) for Preparation of High-Resolution DEM/DTM—A Case Application of Post Flood Assessment of Dhanera City, Rel River Catchment

Flood assessment in the data scare region is the most challenging task for decision-makers and scientists to estimate the flood catastrophe and flood vulnerability in a flood-prone area. In addition, future preparedness and flood mitigation plan solely depend on the accuracy of the flood assessment after the catastrophic flood. The present case shows state of the art for flood assessment using UAV (drone) techniques. Nowadays, flood assessment is performed using hydrodynamic modeling, where DEM/DTM is the basic input for flood simulation. Dhanera city, Rel River catchment of Banaskantha district, which was affected by the flood in 2015 and 2017, is considered for preparing high-resolution DEM. Phantom 4 Pro RTK and Pix4D software are applied to process the 9222 images across the study reach. The point cloud and high-resolution DEM (3.6 × 3.6 cm) have been extracted from Dhanera city for flood assessment using advanced software techniques. Prepared high-resolution DEM will be utilized for pluvial and fluvial flood assessment through hydrodynamic modeling under unsteady flow conditions. UAV-based high-resolution DEM/DTM has been described, and a significant achievement for preparing high-resolution DEM/DTM for flood modeling to improve the decision-making system has been discussed.