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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">ISPRS-Annals</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">ISPRS-Annals</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">ISPRS Ann. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci.</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub">2194-9050</issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/isprs-annals-X-3-W4-2025-293-2026</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>High-Accuracy Corridor Mapping Without GCPs: Assessing Precisions of DSMs Generated from UAS Photogrammetry with On-Site Pre-Calibration</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Pitombeira</surname>
<given-names>Kalima</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Mitishita</surname>
<given-names>Edson</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Toth</surname>
<given-names>Charles</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9461-4887</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Amorim</surname>
<given-names>Natália</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>de Abreu</surname>
<given-names>Marcelo</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Geomatics Department, Federal University of Paraná, Curitiba, PR, Brazil</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Dept. of Civil, Environmental and Geodetic Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>Tecsystem Company, Castelo, ES, Brazil</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>13</day>
<month>03</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>X-3/W4-2025</volume>
<fpage>293</fpage>
<lpage>300</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Kalima Pitombeira et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/X-3-W4-2025/293/2026/isprs-annals-X-3-W4-2025-293-2026.html">This article is available from https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/X-3-W4-2025/293/2026/isprs-annals-X-3-W4-2025-293-2026.html</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/X-3-W4-2025/293/2026/isprs-annals-X-3-W4-2025-293-2026.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/X-3-W4-2025/293/2026/isprs-annals-X-3-W4-2025-293-2026.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>High-resolution Digital Surface Models (DSMs) are crucial for diverse geospatial analyses and UAS photogrammetry offers a cost-effective option for DSM acquisition. However, corridor mapping, due to its linear geometry, challenges the extraction of 3D information without relying on Ground Control Points (GCPs). While onboard GNSS-RTK can improve accuracy, robust camera calibration is critical to mitigate systematic vertical errors propagating in derived DSM. Existing research lacks sufficient investigation into feasible pre-calibration strategies for corridor mapping without GCPs. Therefore, this study addresses this gap by evaluating the precision of DSMs obtained from five photogrammetric experiments without GCPs: one on-the-job calibration and four GNSS-Assisted Aerial Triangulation using on-site pre-calibrations with different sub-blocks of images. For precision assessment of DSMs, a reference experiment with 17 GCPs and all available images was also carried out. Our results show that including oblique images in on-site pre-calibration with sub-blocks significantly reduced the critical correlation between focal length and Z object-space coordinates (from 99% to less than 20%). That outcome directly influenced focal length estimation and allowed mitigation of vertical bias in generated DSMs. The results demonstrate that on-site pre-calibration notably improved the accuracy and precision of vertical spatial data acquisition. These findings highlight on-site oblique pre-calibration with a sub-block of images as a feasible and robust strategy for producing high-resolution 3D models in UAS corridor mapping, significantly reducing reliance on GCPs.</p>
</abstract>
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