In landslide-affected areas, road pavement damage might be significant. The management of road infrastructure requires objective methods for characterizing the condition of the road pavement. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) platforms with integrated digital cameras can provide high
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In landslide-affected areas, road pavement damage might be significant. The management of road infrastructure requires objective methods for characterizing the condition of the road pavement. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) platforms with integrated digital cameras can provide high-resolution images for constructing 3D models of the road. These can be processed to detect and assess the severity of cracks. This chapter aims to present the use of UAV imagery for obtaining quantitative pavement damage information, providing a panorama of the techniques that are currently used. Moreover, it describes a procedure for the processing of the images that provide (i) a damage hotspot map indicating the unevenness of road pavement, (ii) a 3D point cloud with damage/nondamage points and their roughness, and (iii) damage locations classified according to their severity. Last, this Chapter discusses best practices for using a digital camera integrated into a UAV platform for damage assessment and characterization.