Abstract
The lack of availability of historical and reliable river water level information is an issue that can be overcome through the exploitation of modern satellite remote sensing systems. This research has the objective of contributing in solving the information-gap problem of river flow monitoring through a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) signal processing technique that has the capability to perform water flow elevation estimation. This paper proposes the application of a new method for the design of a robust procedure to track over the time double-bounce reflections from bridges crossing rivers to measure the gap space existing between the river surface and bridges. Specifically, the difference in position between the single and double bounce is suitably measured over the time. Simulated and satellite temporal series of SAR data from COSMO-SkyMed data are compared to the ground measurements recorded for three gauges sites over the Po and Tiber Rivers, Italy. The obtained performance indices confirm the effectiveness of the method in the estimation of water level also in narrow or ungauged rivers.
Highlights
The flow of water in rivers and streams is of great interest because it represents the easiest access to water, a fundamental natural resource for human beings, animals and cultivations
With the synthetic aperture radar (SAR) technology applied to altimeters, reliable measurements of water level are obtained for rivers of 200 m width [10] and according to the requirements of the SWOT mission, rivers of 100 m width will be accurately observed by the new Karin sensors [11]
This region of interest (ROI) contains the electromagnetic representation of the bridge, used to calculate the water levels of the Po river
Summary
The flow of water in rivers and streams is of great interest because it represents the easiest access to water, a fundamental natural resource for human beings, animals and cultivations. The designed inter-track diamond distances (when the ground tracks of the low Earth orbits satellites, traveling on ascending and descending directions, are depicted, geometric figures in the shape of diamonds are obtained) and the revisit time represent obstacles to the monitoring of water courses. To overcome these issues, low cost satellite constellations are investigated in order to provide global coverage and finer temporal resolution. There are no satellite systems configured in this way and it is necessary to identify other solutions
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