Development of quick digital field recording and mapping method of geological objects for hydraulic engineering

During the fieldwork of hydraulic engineering, practical engineers normally document geological information manually. Although there are some GIS‐based digital tools for geology, they are not perfectly applicable to hydraulic engineering. As a result, the current work mode is ineffec-tive, unmanageable, error‐prone, and not conducive to subsequent analysis. To address this prob-lem, we developed a digital tool which enables geological recording and quick modeling based on 3D real scenes in the field of hydropower projects. There are three modules in the surface tool: object recording, image interpretation, and field analysis. The object recording module is to mark geological points (e.g., drills and shafts), lines (e.g., faults, stratigraphic boundaries), and surfaces (e.g., slope and stocking yard) on a 3D scene and then store them in the database. The image interpretation is to interpret the 2D information in images to 3D models loaded in 3D software for further studies, such as GOCAD. The field analysis includes surface fitting, stability analysis of blocks, oc-currences calculating, rock recognition, and 69/sketching. The tool is helpful for recording data, drawing geological boundaries, and building a preliminary model in the geological survey.