Digital image-based technique for monitoring surface velocity: Sensitivity analysis with processing parameters using data of a study case

This paper describes the application of image-based technique for mapping surface velocity of hyper-concentrated flows. The analysis is conducted with the aid of data collected in a scale laboratory flume constructed at the Hydraulic laboratory of the Department of Civil, Environmental, Aerospatial and of Materials Engineering (DICAM)-University of Palermo (Italy). A fully digital image-based technique has been applied to record a large amount of high resolution images identifying simultaneously the position of points in different time instants. The use of sediment as natural tracer during images acquisition is explored and the sensitivity analysis of the estimated flow velocity with the number of processed frames is performed.