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On the Use of Unmanned Aerial Systems for Environmental Monitoring
Type
Working PaperAuthors
Manfreda, SalvatoreMcCabe, Matthew

Miller, Pauline
Lucas, Richard
Pajuelo Madrigal, Victor
Mallinis, Giorgos
Ben Dor, Eyal
Helman, David
Estes, Lyndon
Ciraolo, Giuseppe
Müllerová, Jana
Tauro, Flavia
De Lima, M. Isabel
De Lima, Joao L.M.P.
Frances, Felix
Caylor, Kelly
Kohv, Marko
Maltese, Antonino
Perks, Matthew
Ruiz-Pérez, Guiomar
Su, Zhongbo
Vico, Giulia
Toth, Brigitta

KAUST Department
Biological and Environmental Sciences and Engineering (BESE) DivisionEnvironmental Science and Engineering Program
Water Desalination and Reuse Research Center (WDRC)
Date
2018-03-16Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/627353.1
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Environmental monitoring plays a central role in diagnosing climate and management impacts on natural and agricultural systems, enhancing the understanding hydrological processes, optimizing the allocation and distribution of water resources, and assessing, forecasting and even preventing natural disasters. Nowadays, most monitoring and data collection systems are based upon a combination of ground-based measurements, manned airborne sensors or satellite observations. These data are utilized in describing both small and large scale processes, but have spatiotemporal constraints inherent to each respective collection system. Bridging the unique spatial and temporal divides that limit current monitoring platforms is key to improving our understanding of environmental systems. In this context, Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) have considerable potential to radically evolve environmental monitoring. UAS-mounted sensors offer an extraordinary opportunity to bridge the existing gap between field observations and traditional air- and space-borne remote sensing, by providing not just high spatial detail over relatively large areas in a cost-effective way, but as importantly providing an entirely new capacity for enhanced temporal retrieval. As well as showcasing recent advances in the field, there is also a need to identify and understand the potential limitations of UAS technology. For these platforms to reach their monitoring potential, a wide spectrum of unresolved issues and applications specific challenges require focused community attention. Indeed, to leverage the full potential of UAS-based approaches, sensing technologies, measurement protocols, post-processing techniques, retrieval algorithms and evaluations techniques need to be harmonized. The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive general overview of the existing research on studies and applications of UAS in environmental monitoring in order to suggest users and researchers on future research directions, applications, developments and challenges.Citation
Manfreda S, McCabe M, Miller P, Lucas R, Pajuelo Madrigal V, et al. (2018) On the Use of Unmanned Aerial Systems for Environmental Monitoring. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.20944/preprints201803.0097.v1.Sponsors
The present work has been funded by the COST Action CA16219 ”HARMONIOUS - Harmonization of UAS techniques for agricultural and natural ecosystems monitoring”. B. Tóth acknowledges financial support by the Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office (NRDI) under grant KH124765. J. Müllerová was supported by projects GA17-13998S and RVO67985939.Publisher
MDPI AGAdditional Links
https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/201803.0097/v1ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.20944/preprints201803.0097.v1
Scopus Count
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