Water resource management at catchment scales using lightweight UAVs: current capabilities and future perspectives

Abstract

Lightweight, portable unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or ‘drones’ are set to become a key component of a water resource management (WRM) toolkit, but are currently not widely used in this context. In practical WRM there is a growing need for fine-scale responsive data, which cannot be delivered from satellites or aircraft in a cost-effective way. Such a capability is needed where water supplies are located in spatially heterogeneous dynamic catchments. In this review, we demonstrate the step change in hydrological process understanding that could be delivered if WRM employed UAVs. The paper discusses a range of pragmatic concepts in UAV science for cost-effective and practical WRM, from choosing the right sensor and platform combination through to practical deployment and data processing challenges. The paper highlights that multi-sensor approaches, such as combining thermal imaging with fine-scale structure-from-motion topographic models, are currently best placed to assist in WRM decision-making because they provide a means of monitoring the spatio-temporal distribution of sources, sinks, and flows of water through landscapes. The manuscript highlights areas where research is needed to support the integration of UAVs into practical WRM, for example, in improving positional accuracy through integration of differential global positioning system sensors, and developing intelligent control of UAV platforms to optimize the accuracy of spatial data capture.

Review article: the use of remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPASs) for natural hazards monitoring and management

“…Monitoring the flood flow, assessment of the flood inundation areas and related damages, post-flood landscape changes and pre-flood prediction are therefore urgently required. Among various scales of approaches for flood hazards (Sohn et al, 2008), the RPASs has been adopted for each purpose of the flood damage prevention and mitigation because it has the ability to take quick measurements at a low cost (DeBell et al, 2016;Nakamura et al, 2017). Figure 5 shows an example of the use of RPASs for prompt damage assessment by a severe flood occurred on early July 2017 in the northern Kyushu area, south-west Japan.…”

Accuracy Assessment of Digital Surface Models from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles’ Imagery on Glaciers

“…This method offered a new range of application in many different research areas including forestry and agriculture (e.g., [1,2]), archeology (e.g., [3,4]) biology [5,6] and hydrology (e.g., [7,8]). An increase of studies using UAV photogrammetry is observed in geosciences, as well (e.g., [9,10]), where the DSMs and orthophotos are typically used for mapping and monitoring (e.g., [11,12]), object detection (e.g., [13]) or quantification of topographic changes, for instance (e.g., [14,15]).…”

Improving Tree Species Classification Using UAS Multispectral Images and Texture Measures

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