High-quality observation of surface imperviousness for urban runoff modelling using UAV imagery

Tokarczyk, P.; Leitao, J. P.; Rieckermann, J.; Schindler, K.; Blumensaat, F.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-19-4215-2015

Articles | Volume 19, issue 10

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-19-4215-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-19-4215-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 19, issue 10

Research article

|

21 Oct 2015

Research article |

| 21 Oct 2015

High-quality observation of surface imperviousness for urban runoff modelling using UAV imagery

P. Tokarczyk, J. P. Leitao, J. Rieckermann, K. Schindler, and F. Blumensaat

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Final revised paper (published on 21 Oct 2015)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 27 Jan 2015)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC C261: 'Interactive discussion on "Enabling high-quality observations of surface imperviousness for water runoff modelling from unmanned aerial vehicles"', Anonymous Referee #1, 22 Feb 2015
- AC C1451: 'Preliminary reply to Review#1', Piotr Tokarczyk, 12 May 2015
RC C292: 'review of hess-2014-543', Anonymous Referee #2, 25 Feb 2015
- AC C1454: 'Preliminary reply to Review#2', Piotr Tokarczyk, 12 May 2015
EC C1266: 'Start interacting', Nunzio Romano, 26 Apr 2015

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (09 Jul 2015) by Nunzio Romano

AR by Piotr Tokarczyk on behalf of the Authors (20 Aug 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (24 Aug 2015) by Nunzio Romano

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (05 Sep 2015)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Review of paper by Tokarczyk et al. entitled “High quality observations of surface imperviousness for urban runoff modelling using UAV imagery”.

This paper is very well written, something that is too often much too low on reviewers’ lists. It is also very well structured. In my opinion the topic fits the scope of HESS well. The paper starts by reviewing recent usages of UAVs for process modelling and mapping and then describes and compares two classification approaches to derive impervious area from aerial imagery, acquired using conventional orthophotography and a UAV. The resulting mapping is then used in an urban drainage model and differences in model parameterizations and model outputs are assessed.

I recommend publication after some minor corrections. Below I suggest a few changes:

- At the start the authors argue that UAVs are more cost effective. This may well be the case. However, the authors show, like several other studies of this type (i.e. UAV vs. conventional high-res aerial platform technology), that the actual data provided meets the same or very similar but NOT greater accuracies. So, the logical conclusion is that one should use UAVs because they are cheaper even though the transformation from acquisition data to imagery may be requiring specific, new skill sets. I think it would help if the authors stated in their conclusion some more advantages of using UAVs instead of orthophotography.

- It seems to me that the improvement achieved using a advanced classifier is more significant than the use of UAVs vs. orthophotography. Is this correct? At least this is what I understood from your study? If so, does this mean that the authors suggest making progress in developing better algorithms rather than employing UAVs? If so, that’s interesting and should be noted but in either case, this should be explained a little better.

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RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (06 Sep 2015)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (Editor review) (14 Sep 2015) by Nunzio Romano

AR by Piotr Tokarczyk on behalf of the Authors (23 Sep 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (27 Sep 2015) by Nunzio Romano

AR by Piotr Tokarczyk on behalf of the Authors (06 Oct 2015)

Short summary

We investigate for the first time the possibility of deriving high-resolution imperviousness maps for urban areas from UAV imagery and using this information as input for urban drainage models. We show that imperviousness maps generated using UAV imagery processed with modern classification methods achieve accuracy comparable with standard, off-the-shelf aerial imagery. We conclude that UAV imagery represents a valuable alternative data source for urban drainage model applications.