An innovative application of the kinect in earth sciences: Quantifying deformation in analogue modelling of volcanoes

Measuring surface deformation is critical in analogue modelling of Earth science phenomena. Here, we present a novel application of the Microsoft Kinect sensor to measure vertical deformation in a scaled analogue model of Nisyros volcano (Greece), simulating two magmatic sources and related surface deformation. The Kinect permits capture of real time, 640 × 480 pixel, true-colour images (RGB) and a grid of distances to the modelled surface with a horizontal and vertical resolution of ±1 mm. Using recorded distances permits quantification of vertical deformation in terms of maximum and average down- and uplift during deflation and inflation phases respectively, which is of crucial importance for defining the kinematics of faults formed during the modelling, determined from interpretation of the RGB images. Although other techniques have demonstrated similar or higher accuracy, our study demonstrates the cost-effectiveness of the Kinect in analogue modelling of volcanoes. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.