Evaluation of accuracy of DEMs obtained from uav-point clouds for different topographical areas

The main objective of the study was to examine accuracies of DEMs (Digital Elevation Models) with different topographical structures generated by using the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) point clouds. Two different terrains with flat and sloping topographical structures were selected for the study, and DEMs of these terrains were generated using eight interpolation techniques (Kriging, Natural Neighbor, Radial Basis Function Triangulation with Linear interpolation, Nearest Neighbor, Invers Distance to a Power, Local Polynomial and Minimum Curvature). The accuracies of DEMs were tested by calculating the statistic methods with the help of the control points obtained by land surveying techniques. At the end of the study, it was observed that in DEMs prepared for both flat (study area 1) and sloping (study area 2) terrains, Kriging interpolation method yields the best results as study area 1 and 2, respectively. In addition, the results were examined using Shapiro-Wilk and ANOVA: Friedman tests. After observing with the Shapiro-Wilk test that the data has a normal distribution, it was statistically determined through the parametric ANOVA: Friedman test that there is no difference between the variables.