Surfzone Monitoring Using Rotary Wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
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Authors
Brouwer, Ronald L.
De Schipper, Matthiew A.
Rynne, Patrick F.
Graham, Fiona J.
Reniers, J.H.M.
MacMahan, Jamie H.
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Advisors
Date of Issue
2015-04
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Abstract
This study investigates the potential of rotary wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to monitor the
surfzone. This paper shows that these UAVs are extremely flexible surveying platforms that can gather nearcontinuous
moderate spatial resolution and high temporal resolution imagery from a fixed position high
above a study site. The rotary wing UAVs used in this study can fly for ;12 min with a mean loiter radius of
1–3.5m and a mean loiter error of 0.75–4.5 m. These numbers depend on the environmental conditions, flying
style, battery type, and vehicle type. The images obtained from the UAVs, and in combination with surveyed
ground control points (GCPs), can be georectified to a pixel resolution between 0.01 and 1m, and a reprojection
error—that is, the difference between the surveyed GPS location of a GCP and the location of the GCP
obtained from the georectified image—of O(1 m). The flexibility of rotary wing UAVs provides moderate
spatial resolution and high temporal resolution imagery, which are highly suitable to quickly obtain surfzone
and beach characteristics in response to storms or for day-to-day beach safety information, as well as scientific
pursuits of surfzone kinematics on different spatial and temporal scales, and dispersion and advection estimates
of pollutants.
Type
Article
Description
The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JTECH-D-14-00122.1
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Department
Oceanography
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Sponsors
RB and MS are supported by the
ERC-Advanced Grant 291206-NEMO. Furthermore,
this research was funded by a grant from BP’s Gulf of
Mexico Research Initiative.
Funder
Format
Citation
Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, Volume 32, pp. 855-863, April 2015
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This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.