LiDAR and Optical Imaging for 3-D Fracture Orientations

Data on discontinuities are always necessary for design, characterization and analysis of rock structures. The time honored method of manual measurements with Brunton compass is both time consuming and often inconvenient given issues such as restricted access to measurement areas, introduction of erroneous data due to sampling difficulties and human bias, considerable safety risks since measurements are sometimes carried at the base of existing slopes or during quarrying, tunneling or mining operations or along busy highways and difficulty to have direct access to rock faces. Discontinuities manifest themselves in rock cuts as facets that can be measured by LIDAR or fracture traces that can be measured, at least in 2-D by optical imaging methods. Unfortunately LiDAR scanning cannot measure traces nor can optical imaging measure facets . To overcome all these problems, the need to combine both LiDAR data and optical imaging is necessar