Florian Frank and Luisa Trapp were awarded Third Prize by the Chamber of Industry and Commerce (IHK) for Rheinhessen 2024 for their bachelor’s thesis on Inspektion von Hochwasserschutzdeichen (Inspection of flood protection dikes). The official award ceremony was held on December 11 at the IHK Rheinhessen in Mainz. The IHK award honors outstanding scientific work that was produced at a university in the IHK Rheinhessen region and can be expected to be directly or indirectly implemented in business practices.
Luisa Trapp and Florian Frank studied geoinformatics and surveying at Mainz University of Applied Sciences. Their bachelor’s thesis is dedicated to the question of how flood protection dikes can be inspected efficiently and precisely to identify damage at an early stage and ensure the safety of the population in at-risk areas.
As part of the investigation, the students compared two drone-based sensor technologies. The data collected was compared with existing laser scan data from the state of Rhineland-Palatinate and with self-collected terrestrial reference measurements.
“Flood protection is becoming more and more important in the face of climate change and increasing extreme weather events. This recognition underscores not only the quality of education at our university, but also the commitment of our students to developing practical and innovative solutions for today’s challenges,” says Prof. Dr. Susanne Weissman, President of Mainz University of Applied Sciences.
“The students have done an excellent job of evaluating state-of-the-art, low-cost sensor technology for contactless geodata acquisition, which has only been on the market for a very short time, and using it profitably in the highly timely context of flood protection,” says Dipl.-Ing. Margaritha Vogt, who supervised the bachelor’s thesis with Prof. Dr.-Ing. Jörg Klonowski.
