Opportunities for UAS as Smart Inspectors in Environmental Monitoring Applications

Lammert Kooistra1, Juha Suomalainen1, Niels Anders2, Jappe Franke3, Harm Bartholomeus1, Saskia Keesstra2 and Sander Mücher3

1: GRS - Wageningen University

2: SLM – Wageningen University

3: Alterra, Wageningen, The Netherlands

Contents

The Unmanned Aerial Remote Sensing Facility @ WUR ● Organization and people ● Platforms and sensors

Environmental Monitoring Applications ● Agriculture and precision farming ● Habitat mapping and monitoring ● Coastal applications

Outlook ● New applications and sensor ● NL Regulations ● Towards an UAS network

Tim

e

hour –

day –

week –

month –

quarter –

year –

decade –

Space

– – –

–

– local regional state/country continental global

Up-/Down- Scaling

Agricultural parcel: precision agriculture (farmer) Nature reserve: nature management (nature service)

River catchments: flood protection (river & water board) Nature reserves: fire protection (forest service)

Climate change: carbon accounting (national government) Invasive species

Drought monitoring Biodiversity

Climate change Land use

Structural monitoring service

Event monitoring service

Scale requirements for monitoring

Tim

e

hour –

day –

week –

month –

quarter –

year –

decade –

Space

– – –

–

– local regional state/country continental global

Up-/Down- Scaling

Developments in sensing technology

Relevance of UAS for science: flexibility

Close data availability gaps

Increase spatial detail

Courtesy: IMST

Use the complete EM

spectrum

Objectives: ● Platform for dedicated and high-

quality experiments ● Calibration facilities and disseminating

processing procedures to the UAS user community

● Test use in a broad range of applications like habitat monitoring, precision agriculture and land degradation assessment

Unmanned Aerial Remote Sensing Facility

Remote Sensing Science: UAS in a chain

backward engineering

Hyperspectral Mapping Concept

Aerialtronics Altura AT8 ● Programmable

autonomous flight ● 2kg payload ● 5-10 min flight time

Pushbroom spectrometer ● 450-950nm ● FWHM 9nm ● 20 lines/s

Consumer RGB camera GPS/Inertia navigation

System ● Accuracy: 4m / 0.25°

Photo Radiometric Processing

Photo Geometric Processing

Datacube Radiometric Processing

Datacube Geometric Processing

Overview of processing chain

Digital Surface Model

Georectified Hyperspectral

Datacube

High Resolution RGB

Orthomosaic

Result Experimental Field Dronten

31 mei 11 juni 23 juni 5 juli 14 juli 19 aug 6 sept

Optimal start

Adjustment over the season

Sensor observation

Agriculture and precision farming

Potential at start: soil organic matter status

Mapping soil erosion status

Landslide displacement

Over growing season: crop monitoring

June 6 June 14 July 5 July 17

Flight at 100m altitude Pixel size

Orthophoto 0.018m Hyperspectral 0.500m

Over growing season: crop monitoring

Chlre = (780/710)-1

Over growing season: crop monitoring

June 14 July 5

Msc thesis Thomas Koot in cooperation with

Farming Systems – WUR Jan Willem Hofstee

Identification of sugarbeet in potato

Habitat mapping and monitoring

Forest cuts

Monitoring Deforestation Wekeromse Zand

Google Earth

Jappe Franke , Juha Suomalainen Philip Wenting

3D Model

Coral reef mapping island of Bonaire

Outlook UARSF @ WUR

From mapping to monitoring ● Consistent signal in time (spatially and spectrally) ● Efficient processing chains -> real-time products ● Link UAS products with science fields and applications ● Integration with satellite and ground based sensors

● New UAS domains: forestry and thermal

● NL Regulations and towards Certification

● BNUC-S: Basic National UAS Certificate – Small Aircraft ● Operations Manual ● Theory Ground Course and Flight Examination ● ILT project exemption + TUG

Research <-> Commercial <-> End-users

● Exchange/flow of knowledge

● Sharing of protocols/best practices required

● Sharing and exchange of facilities

● regulatory frameworks

Research Network Smart Inspectors (smartinspectors.net)

UAS in research and business: how to meet?

RSRW

sceme.de

WUR

IMST BLGG LWK NRW

HSRW

Alterra Terrasphere

Thank you for your attention www.wageningen-ur.nl/uarsf

Research oriented projects: Bioscope, Fieldcopter, Smart Inspectors and many more (limited duration)

Regulation oriented platforms: national and EU

Sector organized platforms: e.g., DARPAS in NL

Scientific conferences and workshops:

● Workshop on UAV-based Remote Sensing Methods for Monitoring Vegetation, Sept. 9th - 10th, 2013, Uni Cologne

● UAS event Eindhoven and Odense in 2013

● UAV-g conference 4- 6 Sept. 2013 at Rostock University

● UAS session, EGU2014 conference, Vienna

Current UAS networks

Position of UAS networks

Public/policy: RPAS regulation

Research: Innovations and

solutions

Business/users: Products and

services

Sector platforms: e.g., DARPAS-NL

Regulation oriented platforms

Research oriented projects

Conferences and workshops

Who or what???