Assessment of the uncertainty budget in Terrestrial

Laser Scanner (TLS) characterization of fault scarps,

Panamint Valley, southeastern California
J.S. Oldow and P. Shilpakar
Department of Geosciences
University of Texas at Dallas
Richardson, Texas 75080
J.D. Walker and A.J. Herrs
Department of Geology
University of Kansas
Lawrence, Kansas 66045

Mo#va#on
Quan%ta%ve models of natural surfaces

Fault-scarp morphology models used to
es%mate rupture age

Change detec%on and evolu%on of
geomorphic features

Santa Rosa fault scarp, northern Nevada

10 cm DEM (Hillshade) of Santa Rosa fault scarp, northern Nevada

Location of Study Area (San Gabriel, California)

1.0 m DEM San Gabriel Mountains, California

10 cm DEM (Hillshade) San Gabriel Mountains, California

Uncertainty Analysis: Test in Panamint

Valley, California

Experiment Configuration
Two Riegl Z620 scanners: University of Texas at Dallas and Kansas University
Imaged Happy Canyon fault scarp from 3 locations (range 10 to 540 m)
Scanners occupied same tripods successively through measurement circuit
Reference network of seven (7) 10 cm reflectors and one (1) 360 degree prism
Reference network controlled using Topcon Total Station (10 repeat measurements)
Time series GPS-RTK measurement of reflectors (5 occupations) with base for 12
hours (note: all calculations in ECEF Cartesian )
Analysis
Total Station measurement of reflector network used as reference (TS frame)
Compare UTD and KU measurement of reference network (record residuals)
UTD and KU reference scans transformed to TS frame (record residuals)
GPS positions of reference reflectors transformed to TS frame (record residuals)
Grid UTD and KU point clouds and compare point cloud values to interpolated
surface (residual map)
Difference UTD and KU surfaces (residual map)

10 cm DEM of Happy Canyon Scarps

Scan Area

UTD/KU Baseline Residuals Scan Position 1

UTD/KU Baseline Residuals Scan Position 2

UTD/KU Baseline Residuals Scan Position 3

UTD/KU Baselines from 3 Scan Positions

Distance versus Transformation Residual

No correlation between residual and distance; the inter-scanner

repeatability is 0.019 0.011 m.

Reference Network

Total Station (TS) Position RMSE (10 repeat measurements)

Network RSME 0.004 0.002 m

GPS-RTK Position RMSE

Network RSME 0.019 0.001 m

6 Parameter Transformation RMSE for GPS to TS Frame

Network RSME 0.019 0.006 m

6 Parameter Transformation RMSE for TLS to TS Frame

Network RMSE 0.037 0.019 m

Analysis Results
Total Station Reference: network coordinate uncertainty 0.004 0.002 m
TLS range repeatability: RMSE 0.019 0.011 m
Transform TLS to TS frame: RMSE 0.037 0.019 m
GPS-RTK control network solution using NGS OPUS value for base: RMSE
0.019 0.001 m
GPS-RTK to TS frame: RMSE 0.019 0.006 m
TLS to TS to GPS: RMSE 0.042 0.020 m
UTD and KU DEM analysis shows greatest error from vegetation (RMSE of
0.038 m) and in areas of little vegetation (RMSE of 0.005 m)

KU TLS 10 cm DEM

UTD TLS 10 cm DEM

Residual Between Surface and Point Cloud

KU TLS

UTD TLS

Residual between KU and UTD TLS 10 cm DEM ~0.04 m

Residual between KU and UTD TLS 10 cm DEM in low vegetation area

~ 0.005 m

Analysis Summary
Riegl Z620 Instrument repeatability: ~0.02 0.01 m
Absolution positioning of TLS scans with standard RTK GPS
deployment: ~0.04 0.02 m (improvement to 0.03 0.01 m with
static GPS time-series and network adjustment using TS baselines)
Surface analysis (0.1 m DEM) contributes uncertainty of ~0.04 m
where contaminated by vegetation but in non-vegetated areas
contributes about ~0.005 m to error budget.

Optimized Repeatability Configuration

Fixed Reference Network (more than 6 reference reflectors/prisms)
Total Station Survey of Reference Network (control geometry)
Continuous Static GPS Survey of Reference Network
GPS Solution with TS baseline adjustment
4+ best reference reflector solutions to align scans to geospatial frame