The investigation of terrible accident of the Iryo train in Adamuz collect a new spin with the location of a train bogie 270 meters from the entrance road where the impact occurred.
The controversy lies in the fact that the bogiealso called frame o bogiewas found by an American journalist from the newspaper The New York Timeswithout any police tape or marking, which could indicate that they had missed it.
However, the Civil Guard has stated that the bogie had already been previously located through sU drone-based 3D infographic forensic systemwhat is known as photogrammetry o video gamemetry with drones. What does this technique consist of?
Drones that recreate the terrain in 3D to investigate disasters
From the photo that can be seen in the American newspaper article, the bogie has a lot of rust on the part submerged in the water of a stream, so perhaps it does not belong to the damaged Iryo train. La Benemérita says that the investigation is under secrecy.
A bogie is a part of a train that goes between the car and the track. In addition to holding the wagon, it contains the wheels that fit on the track, as well as the suspension and braking systems. It is very important because It is the piece that keeps the train on the trackand if it belonged to one of the trains of the Adamuz accidentwould be key in the investigation.
The Civil Guard has said that they located him using forensic photogrammetry using dronesand since we are a technological website, we are going to see how this technology works, which is used in a multitude of areas.
The drone photogrammetry consists of using the cameras carried by the drones to capture photographs of a landscape, from many different angles. Software analyzes the photos and converts them into a 3D model that can be freely manipulated. It is widely used in topography, agriculture, engineering, cadastre, and in disasters such as fires, or the Iryo de Adamuz accident. Going further, the 3D cities on Google Maps use this technique.
The operation is quite simple. The drone flies in circles over an area, taking hundreds of photographs of the same place at different heights and angles. It is important that the photos overlap a little, in order to create the 3D object.
Then it is used specialized software such as Maps Made Easy, Pix4D, PhotoModeler or RealityCapturewhich takes those photos, recomposes them in 3D, and generates a point cloud that allows you to build a 3D model of the place, with the photos as textures.
The advantage of photogrammetry is that once you have that 3D representation, you can zoom it or rotate it as you want to find hidden things that go unnoticed, like the bogie of a train that appeared 270 meters from the Adamuz accidenthidden in a forest in the hollow of a stream.
A variant of this technique is videogrammetry. Instead of using photos, use video. It is simpler and faster to implement, but the results are usually not as precise.
The latest in photogrammetry is to use artificial intelligence to “tag” what is seen on the 3D mapusing software such as SynthEyes, Actec 3D, or even conventional chatbots such as ChatGPT or Gemini. The AI “looks” at the image and describes what it sees. Because it works at the pixel level, it can see things that go unnoticed by the human eye.
In the previous video you can see cHow the National Police uses 3D forensic infographics. It is a different situation because it is at street level, and drones are not used. The scenario is generated in 3D with flat textures because it focuses on a crime and not on searching for something.
The researchers of terrible accident of the Iryo train in Amamuz They are using forensic photogrammetry with drones to obtain a 3D composition of the accident site and the surrounding area. Let’s hope they can clarify the cause of the derailment, so that it does not happen again.