Abstract
Flood control and water resources management require monitoring the water level in rivers and streams. Water level measurement techniques increasingly consider image processing procedures. Most of the systems use a staff gauge to support the waterline detection. However, these techniques can fail when applied to urban stream channels due to water undulation, debris on the water surface, and traces of rain captured by the camera, and other adverse effects on images can be quite dramatic on the results. The importance of considering these effects is that they are usually associated with the variation in the water level with the occurrence of rain. The technique proposed in this work uses a larger detection zone to minimize the effects that tend to obstruct the waterline. The developed system uses an infrared camera to operate during the day and night. Images acquired in different weather conditions helped to evaluate the proposed technique. The water level measurement accuracy was about 1.8 cm for images taken during the day and 2.8 cm for images taken at night. During short periods of heavy rain, the accuracy was 2.6 cm for the daytime and 3.4 cm for the nighttime. Infrared lighting can improve detection accuracy at night. The developed technique provides good accuracy under different weather conditions by combining information from various detection positions to deal with waterline detection issues.
Highlights
Aime’ Lay-Ekuakille and Monitoring the water level in rivers, streams, and reservoirs has several applications, such as flood control, water flow measurement, and water resources management [1,2,3,4,5]
We developed a monitoring system to measure the water level in urban stream channels
The water is at a low level most of the time, but it can change quickly with rain events. These degrade water quality, cause water undulation, give rise to debris floating on the water surface, create traces of rain in the acquired images, and so on
Summary
Aime’ Lay-Ekuakille and Monitoring the water level in rivers, streams, and reservoirs has several applications, such as flood control, water flow measurement, and water resources management [1,2,3,4,5]. The techniques typically employed to measure the water level are based on float or pressure sensors, ultrasonic water meters, satellite-based systems, and image-based systems [6]. Owing to the risk of flooding, it is essential to control the flow of urban streams in hydrographic basins with a large population close to mountainous areas. Ultrasonic systems are simple to install, but they have several disadvantages, namely those related to water turbulence [7,8]. Satellite systems do not provide sufficient spatial or temporal resolution, especially for small water streams [9,10]
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