scholarly journals Can GNSS-R Detect Abrupt Water Level Changes?

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (21) ◽  
pp. 3614
Author(s):  
Sajad Tabibi ◽  
Olivier Francis

Global navigation satellite system reflectometry (GNSS-R) uses signals of opportunity in a bi-static configuration of L-band microwave radar to retrieve environmental variables such as water level. The line-of-sight signal and its coherent surface reflection signal are not separate observables in geodetic GNSS-R. The temporally constructive and destructive oscillations in the recorded signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) observations can be used to retrieve water-surface levels at intermediate spatial scales that are proportional to the height of the GNSS antenna above the water surface. In this contribution, SNR observations are used to retrieve water levels at the Vianden Pumped Storage Plant (VPSP) in Luxembourg, where the water-surface level abruptly changes up to 17 m every 4-8 h to generate a peak current when the energy demand increases. The GNSS-R water level retrievals are corrected for the vertical velocity and acceleration of the water surface. The vertical velocity and acceleration corrections are important corrections that mitigate systematic errors in the estimated water level, especially for VPSP with such large water-surface changes. The root mean square error (RMSE) between the 10-min multi-GNSS water level time series and water level gauge records is 7.0 cm for a one-year period, with a 0.999 correlation coefficient. Our results demonstrate that GNSS-R can be used as a new complementary approach to study hurricanes or storm surges that cause abnormal rises of water levels.

2015 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 122-137
Author(s):  
Richard Edwing ◽  
Chung-Chu Teng ◽  
Robert Heitsenrether

AbstractThe critical need for real-time coastal oceanographic and meteorological measurements to support maritime forecasters, emergency managers, pilots, vessel operators, port authorities, coastal planners, and many other decision makers has rapidly grown, along with the variety of scientific research applications that rely on resulting long-term data records. To support the needs for such observations, the National Ocean Service Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services (CO-OPS) continues to maintain and develop the National Water Level Observation Network (NWLON) and Physical Oceanographic Real-Time Systems (PORTS®). Together, these networks consist of over 300 long-term, real-time observatories distributed across the nation's coasts. In situ data measured and disseminated in real time from NWLON and PORTS stations include water levels, ocean currents, waves, water temperature, conductivity, bridge clearance, visibility, and several meteorological parameters. CO-OPS invests heavily in analysis of emerging technologies to identify potential improvements in data quality and operating efficiency and to ensure that the evolving needs of its diverse user community are continuously met. Recent enhancements to the CO-OPS network include the transition to microwave radar water level sensors to increase accuracy and simplify installation and maintenance requirements; development and testing of nearshore wave measurement systems; development of standalone, bottom-mounted water level gauges for applications in remote Arctic areas; and expanding data communication capabilities to improve usage of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites and to broaden use of the Iridium satellite system. An overview of the latest design features of typical CO-OPS real-time stations is presented, along with highlights of recent system developments and enhancements.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Radosław Szostak ◽  
Przemysław Wachniew ◽  
Mirosław Zimnoch ◽  
Paweł Ćwiąkała ◽  
Edyta Puniach ◽  
...  

<p>Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) can be an excellent tool for environmental measurements due to their ability to reach inaccessible places and fast data acquisition over large areas. In particular drones may have a potential application in hydrology, as they can be used to create photogrammetric digital elevation models (DEM) of the terrain allowing to obtain high resolution spatial distribution of water level in the river to be fed into hydrological models. Nevertheless, photogrammetric algorithms generate distortions on the DEM at the water bodies. This is due to light penetration below the water surface and the lack of static characteristic points on water surface that can be distinguished by the photogrammetric algorithm. The correction of these disturbances could be achieved by applying deep learning methods. For this purpose, it is necessary to build a training dataset containing DEMs before and after water surfaces denoising. A method has been developed to prepare such a dataset. It is divided into several stages. In the first step a photogrammetric surveys and geodetic water level measurements are performed. The second one includes generation of DEMs and orthomosaics using photogrammetric software. Finally in the last one the interpolation of the measured water levels is done to obtain a plane of the water surface and apply it to the DEMs to correct the distortion. The resulting dataset was used to train deep learning model based on convolutional neural networks. The proposed method has been validated on observation data representing part of Kocinka river catchment located in the central Poland.</p><p>This research has been partly supported by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education Project “Initiative for Excellence – Research University” and Ministry of Science and Higher Education subsidy, project no. 16.16.220.842-B02 / 16.16.150.545.</p>


Author(s):  
Satryo B. Utomo ◽  
Januar Fery Irawan ◽  
Rizqi Renafasih Alinra

Early warning of floods is an essential part of disaster management. Various automatic detectors have been developed in flood mitigation, including cameras. But reliability and accuracy have not been improved. Besides, the use of monitoring devices has been employed to monitor water levels in various water building facilities. The early warning flood detector was carried out with a sensor camera using an orange ball that floats near the water level gauge in a bounding box. This approach uses the integration of computer vision and image processing, namely digital image processing techniques, with Sobel Canny edge detection (SCED) algorithms to detect quickly and accurately water levels in real-time. After the water level is measured, a flood detection process is carried out based on the specified water level. According to the results of experiments in the laboratory, it has been shown that the proposed approach can detect objects accurately and fast in real-time. Besides, from the water level detection experiment, good results were obtained. Therefore, the object detection system and water level can be used as an efficient and accurate early detection system for flood disasters.


1996 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 185-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raafat G. Saadé ◽  
Semaan Sarraf

In Northern Regions, the formation of ice jams along many rivers is a common phenomena. These ice jams may occur during the freeze-up and more importantly during the spring break-up period. Ice jams in general have considerable effects on the water levels because they alter the water surface profile for stretches of tens of kilometers along the rivers. As a consequence, water levels increase significantly upstream of the ice jam and result in the flooding of towns situated along the river banks. Knowledge of the water levels within an ice jam can be used to estimate many parameters that are difficult to measure and observe. Examples of such parameters are the local and global ice jam resistance to the flow, and forces acting within an ice jam. While ice jams are notorious causes of serious problems in hydraulic engineering, very little engineering methodology exists to deal with such problems. In this paper, the results of a laboratory study aimed at investigating the development of the water surface profile along an ice jam that is lodged in place, are analyzed and presented. A rectangular flume with a horizontal bed was used for the experiments. Twelve experiments carried out under different geometrical, hydrodynamic and ice conditions, were analysed. A simulated floating ice cover was used to arrest the downstream transport of the ice floes, forming the ice jams. The experiments indicate two types of ice jams, those that are floating and others that are lodged at one or more locations along their length. The phreatic water level along a floating ice jam is up to 0.92 the ice jam thickness. This is not true when an ice jam is lodged in place. Different experiments have shown that the water surface profile along a lodged ice jam follows similar tendencies regardless of the geometry, ice floe size distribution and hydrodynamic conditions. It was found that the phreatic water level varies linearly from the trailing edge of the ice jam up to approximately 90% of its length downstream. Towards the remaining part of the jam's length the water level follows a cubic polynomial line.


2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-59
Author(s):  
Cheng Chen ◽  
Jun Chen ◽  
Peng Lin ◽  
Chiwei Chen ◽  
Haozhe Chen

AbstractTsunami disasters have frequently occurred in recent years. More and more researchers are focusing on this topic. To investi-gate the tsunami bore impact mechanism on a container model, a multi-functional slope-changing tsunami flume is built in this study. To simulate a tsunami bore, a dam-break wave was generated by a free-falling gate in a reservoir. A needle water level gauge and a high-speed camera were used to measure the tsunami wave heights and velocities for different storage water levels in the test flume, and the corresponding Froude numbers of tsunami waves were also calculated. The factors af-fecting the movement distance of the tsunami wave impacting the container model are explored in this experiment, and the results show that the movement distance is positively correlated with the storage water level, and negatively correlated with the container density and the coast slope.


Author(s):  
Paulo Henrique Costa ◽  
Eric Oliveira Pereira ◽  
Philippe Maillard

Satellite altimetry is becoming a major tool for measuring water levels in rivers and lakes offering accuracies compatible with many hydrological applications, especially in uninhabited regions of difficult access. The Pantanal is considered the largest tropical wetland in the world and the sparsity of <i>in situ</i> gauging station make remote methods of water level measurements an attractive alternative. This article describes how satellites altimetry data from Envisat and Saral was used to determine water level in two small lakes in the Pantanal. By combining the water level with the water surface area extracted from satellite imagery, water volume fluctuations were also estimated for a few periods. The available algorithms (retrackers) that compute a range solution from the raw waveforms do not always produce reliable measurements in small lakes. This is because the return signal gets often “contaminated” by the surrounding land. To try to solve this, we created a “lake” retracker that rejects waveforms that cannot be attributed to “calm water” and convert them to altitude. Elevation data are stored in a database along with the water surface area to compute the volume fluctuations. Satellite water level time series were also produced and compared with the only nearby <i>in situ</i> gauging station. Although the “lake” retracker worked well with calm water, the presence of waves and other factors was such that the standard “ice1” retracker performed better on the overall. We estimate our water level accuracy to be around 75 cm. Although the return time of both satellites is only 35 days, the next few years promise to bring new altimetry satellite missions that will significantly increase this frequency.


2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 265-280 ◽  
Author(s):  
Björn Sohlberg ◽  
Mats Sernfält

This paper deals with modelling and identification of a river system using physical insights about the process, experience of operating the system and information about the system dynamics shown by measured data. These components together form a linear model structure in the state space form. The inputs of the prospective model are physical variables, which are not directly measured. However, the model inputs can be found by a nonlinear transformation of measured variables. Unknown parameters of the model are estimated from measured data. The modelling work focuses on the principle of parsimony, which means the best model approach is the simplest one that fit the purpose of the application. The goal of the model is to control the water level of the river, where the water flow is mainly determined by the demand for energy generation produced by the hydropower stations along the river. The energy requirement increases in the morning and decreases in the evening. These flow variations, caused by the energy demand, have to be compensated by controlling the power plants downstream, in such a way that the water level between the power stations is guaranteed. Simulation of the control system by using an adaptive model predictive controller shows that the water levels vary less and can be maintained at a higher level than during manual control. This means that more electric power can be produced with the same amount of water flow.


10.29007/fvl7 ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Pipitone ◽  
Francesca Cigna ◽  
Gino Dardanelli ◽  
Goffredo La Loggia ◽  
Antonino Maltese ◽  
...  

Recently, it has been demonstrated that it is possible to relate water levels of a reservoir with its dam displacements. Water levels were determined via remote sensing, while dam displacements were measured via Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). Results have shown that displacements and water levels are correlated.Water levels at the Magazzolo reservoir in southern Italy were firstly retrieved using two remote sensing approaches: by visual matching between the reservoir shoreline and contour lines, and by evaluating the surface extent via unsupervised classification to estimate the water levels with an area/depth relation. Dam displacements were measured using GPS receivers on the dam and a permanent station from a GNSS Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS) network, about 30 kilometers away.Subsequently, two other remote sensing approaches were tested to detect reservoir levels; the first based on shape similarity indices, while the second on the evaluation of the average distance between a reservoir shoreline and contour levels. First results were extracted from a Landsat 8 optical image acquired during a clear sky day. Within this work, algorithms for water level retrieval have been tested and validated under different conditions over a more consistent satellite dataset including Sentinel-1A Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images acquired from October 2014 to September 2015. The dataset is also used to analyses dam displacements via Interferometric SAR (InSAR), to be compared with the effects of water level fluctuations on the dam. First results suggest that it is possible to correlate dam displacements and water levels derived by the same dataset. However, it is shown that displacements also depend on meteorological forcing.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 673-685
Author(s):  
David J. Purnell ◽  
Natalya Gomez ◽  
William Minarik ◽  
David Porter ◽  
Gregory Langston

Abstract. We have developed a ground-based Global Navigation Satellite System Reflectometry (GNSS-R) technique for monitoring water levels with a comparable precision to standard tide gauges (e.g. pressure transducers) but at a fraction of the cost and using commercial products that are straightforward to assemble. As opposed to using geodetic-standard antennas that have been used in previous GNSS-R literature, we use multiple co-located low-cost antennas to retrieve water levels via inverse modelling of signal-to-noise ratio data. The low-cost antennas are advantageous over geodetic-standard antennas not only because they are much less expensive (even when using multiple antennas in the same location) but also because they can be used for GNSS-R analysis over a greater range of satellite elevation angles. We validate our technique using arrays of four antennas at three test sites with variable tidal forcing and co-located operational tide gauges. The root mean square error between the GNSS-R and tide gauge measurements ranges from 0.69–1.16 cm when using all four antennas at each site. We find that using four antennas instead of a single antenna improves the precision by 30 %–50 % and preliminary analysis suggests that four appears to be the optimum number of co-located antennas. In order to obtain precise measurements, we find that it is important for the antennas to track GPS, GLONASS and Galileo satellites over a wide range of azimuth angles (at least 140∘) and elevation angles (at least 30∘). We also provide software for analysing low-cost GNSS data and obtaining GNSS-R water level measurements.


2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (32) ◽  
pp. 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Errol J. McLean ◽  
Jon B. Hinwood

Tidal inlets which link a tidal basin to the sea via a constricted entrance are common on the south-east Australian coast. Closure, or even significant constriction, raises water levels but restricts tidal range within the basin, while open entrances provide regular and significant tidal exchange with the ocean. A rapid assessment procedure with minimal data requirements has been shown to be informative for monitoring and a useful component of any Decision Support System set up as part of a management structure. Such a system is presented in this paper. It is based on one permanent water level gauge inside the inlet plus the use of a simple, first-order hydrodynamic model to relate the tide range, mean water level and river flow to the inlet cross sectional area. The method is tested against data from the Snowy River Estuary in south-eastern Australia but would be suitable over a range of estuaries. In addition, the framework presented can also provide a mechanism to explore conditions over the range of expected data, thus allowing better selection of model schematization and runs in estuarine systems where the use of 2 or 3D modeling can be justified.


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