Use of drones for the topo-bathymetric monitoring of the reservoirs of the Segura River Basin

Abstract

The Segura River Basin (SRB), located in the South East of Spain, has the lowest percentage of renewable water resources of all the Spanish basins. Therefore, knowledge of the annual rate of water reservoir sedimentation is an important issue to be resolved in one of the most water-stressed regions in the western Mediterranean basin. This paper describes the sensors developed in collaboration with technology-based enterprises (aerial drone, floating drone, and underwater drone), and the methodology for integration of the different types of data acquired to monitor the reservoirs of the SRB. The proposed solution was applied to 21 reservoirs of the SRB. The proposed methodology is based on the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) for photogrammetry of the reservoir surface area. For each reservoir, two flights were completed, with 20 cm and 5 cm resolution, respectively. Then, a triangular irregular network mesh was generated by GIS techniques. Surface water vehicles (USV) and underwater remote-operated vehicles (ROV) were used to undertake bathymetric surveys. In addition, water quality measurements were made with an ROV device. The main results consist of topographic and bathymetric measurements for each reservoir, obtained by using equipment based on OpenSource technology. According to the results, the annual rate of storage capacity loss of water resources in the SRB ' s reservoirs is 0.33%.