Large-Scale Reality Modeling of a University Campus Using Combined UAV and Terrestrial Photogrammetry for Historical Preservation and Practical Use

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) enable detailed historical preservation of large-scale infrastructure and contribute to cultural heritage preservation, improved maintenance, public relations, development planning. Aerial terrestrial photo data coupled with high accuracy GPS create hyper-realistic mesh texture models, resolution point clouds, orthophotos, digital elevation models (DEMs) that preserve a snapshot history. A case study is presented the 3D model spans complex 1.7 km2 area Brigham Young University campus in Provo, Utah, USA includes over 75 significant structures. The leverages photos obtained during historic COVID-19 pandemic mandatory rare closure details large scale modeling workflow best practice acquisition processing techniques. utilizes 80,384 images surveying points 1.65 trillion-pixel textured structure-from-motion (SfM) an average ground sampling distance (GSD) near structures 0.5 cm maximum 4 cm. Separate segments (31) taken from gathered between April August 2020 are combined into one cohesive final absolute error 3.3 full <1 (relative accuracies 0.25 1.03 cm). Optimized automated UAV techniques complement model, opportunities explored archive as-is building information facility planning, outreach, 3D-printed miniatures, possibility education through virtual reality (VR) augmented (AR) tours.