Project researchers from TU Dresden have recently carried out a series of drone surveys at the Chinese mitten crab trap site alongside the Elbe river in Dresden, Germany. The surveys, conducted at the end of 2025, provide valuable visual and scientific data that will support hydrodynamic modelling and improve understanding of crab migration patterns.
The drone flights were primarily conducted to create high-resolution digital surface models (DSMs) of the immediate trap environment, including the flow channel and the banks of the Elbe River upstream and downstream of the crab trap location. During the flights, RGB images were captured using a digital camera, and terrestrial scans were performed with a LiDAR measuring device.
The collected data were used in the pre-processing phase to generate GeoTIFFs and point clouds, from which computational meshes can be created. Based on these meshes, hydrodynamic-numerical simulations will be carried out to examine the flow characteristics near the trap under different discharge scenarios. The simulation results are intended to provide insights into the most likely migration paths of the Chinese mitten crab in this section of the Elbe river.