Abstract
Abstract. Spin.Works has developed a complete micro-UAV system with the purpose of supporting forest management activities. The aircraft is based on a winged-body design spanning 1.8 m with a maximum take-off weight of 2 kg, and can carry out missions lasting up to 2 h at a cruise speed of about 60 km/h. The corresponding ground station ensures the mission planning functions, real-time flight monitoring and visualization, and serves also as a real-time and post-flight data exploitation platform. A particular emphasis is placed on image processing techniques applied to two operational concepts: a fire detection service and a forest mapping service. The real-time operations related to fire detection consist on object tracking and geo-referencing functions, which can be operated by a user directly over the video stream, enabling the quick estimation of the 3D location (latitude, longitude, altitude) of suspected fires. The post-flight processing consists of extracting valuable knowledge from the payload data, in particular tree coverage maps, orthophoto mosaics and Digital Surface Models (DSMs), which can be used for further forest characterization such as wood and cork volume estimation. The system is currently entering initial operations, with expanded operations expected during Q3 2013.
Highlights
Forests are an essential part of the environment, contributing towards water quality and biodiversity, and providing food, energy and medicinal resources, as well as construction materials
Forests represent a large percentage of land, a relevant economic value (1% of GDP) and a significant source of employment in Europe, which underscores their role in the lives of many Europeans, the majority of which live in rural areas
We present a micro-UAV system, which is described as follows: In section 1 we present 1) the overall system performance; 2) the ground station
Summary
Forests are an essential part of the environment, contributing towards water quality and biodiversity, and providing food, energy and medicinal resources, as well as construction materials. Two of the key elements in the sustainable forest management are, on one hand, their protection against wildfires (through both planning, continuous monitoring and effective combat) and, on the other, an assessment of the economic value of the forest biomass. In this respect, and while an assessment of the available wood - both as an energy resource and as a construction material – is more generally applicable to forests throughout the continent, in the specific case of low-density cork oak forests common throughout Southwestern Europe, the focus variable is, instead, an assessment of the available cork.
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