STRUCTURE FROM MOTION (SFM)-BASED SLOPE STABILITY EXERCISE AT JAMES MADISON UNIVERSITY’S FIELD CAMP IN IRELAND

Traditional geology field camp consists of various geological mapping exercises aimed at giving students the opportunity to perform geological mapping and analyze stratigraphic relationships. JMU’s field camp in western Ireland has over the years evolved to add exercises in applied geology such as hydrology, engineering geology and geophysics. The engineering geology exercise, piloted in 2016 is on designing rock slope cut design along a fictitious road crossing the eastern part of Bencorragh Mountain in western Ireland. For the exercise, students in groups of two were required to 1) topographically map a 200 m buffer along the median of the proposed road, 2) collect discontinuity data to analyze for potential rock slope failures, and 3) recommend rock slope design based on discontinuity data analysis. Topographic surveying and discontinuity data collection was performed using Brunton compasses. During the 2017 field camp, students used point cloud data they generated from SFM photogrammetry to extract discontinuity data. Students then analyzed the discontinuity data through stereonet based kinematic analysis to propose safe slope angles. The final output of the exercise were 1) topographic map along the proposed road, 2) stereonets showing kinematic analysis, and 3) topographic cross-sections showing the proposed rock slope design. In addition to slope stability analysis, the exercise gave students the opportunity to develop their geospatial skills through topographic surveying. The exercise provided a simple geological application of point cloud data that can be generated from sfm photogrammetry or terrestrial LiDAR.