When Charleston District’s chief of Operations sent out an email about the ERDC University (ERDC-U) program, Krystle Miner was immediately interested and excited that she had the support of management to apply for the program.
With master’s degree in Environmental Studies, she was ready for the challenges and opportunities this Program provided. Her district’s GIS program is growing, so her focus in ERDC-U was in the geospatial analysis program. Her primary duty as a geographer in the Spatial Data Branch is mapping, so Miner wanted to bring back to the district new tools and techniques that will allow her group to expand to more analytical work and increase the range of support to their customers.
Miner’s time spent working with her mentor, Dr. Rob Fischer of ERDC Geospatial Research Laboratory’s Geospatial Applications Branch, was directed at learning a new technique for image analysis. She assisted GRL personnel in collecting, processing, and analyzing geospatial data with specific emphasis on extracting biophysical information for civilian and tactical applications. Specifically, Miner used photogrammetric structure-from-motion procedures to create digital surface models and orthomosaics from images collected from an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle with a mounted camera. She used this method to characterize vegetation in the Nevada desert to assess the product accuracy versus field-collected measurements. More recently, she applied the method to complete an accuracy assessment of various datasets collected in the dune environment at ERDC’s Field Research Facility (FRF) at Duck, North Carolina.
While working on her primary project, Miner was introduced to the Applied Civil Works Research Program, “UAS Support to Civil Works Flood Risk Management.” She grasped the potential benefit for her district and developed a draft proposal to use Unmanned Aircraft Systems platforms and processing methods to assess jetties within Charleston Harbor. This proposal was so well received by the research team that a surrogate test and evaluation was quickly developed and carried out during the initial field experiment at the FRF. As a follow-on, the research team will be coordinating a full pilot project with Charleston District in FY18.
“An extremely valuable component of the ERDC-U program is the day-to-day interaction that led to new ideas and applications,” Miner said. She is recommending ERDC-U to her colleagues, stating that “it was important for me to see the R&D side of USACE, as well as for ERDC personnel to gain a perspective on how the district works.”