Scholarship code CU1.276

A smart CAmera system for RIver MOnitoring

  • Reference person
    Salvatore
    Manfreda
    salvatore.manfreda@unina.it
  • Host University/Institute
    University of Naples Federico II
  • Internship
    Y
  • Research Keywords
    Image velocimetry
    Image processing
    River monitoring
  • Reference ERCs
    PE8_11
    PE10_17
  • Reference SDGs
    GOAL 6: Clean Water and Sanitation
    GOAL 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
    GOAL 13: Climate Action

Description

In the coming years, water management will face critical challenges due to the concomitant impact of global warming, population growth, and pollution. There is therefore an urgent need to identify new strategies for river monitoring to support water budget and quality assessment. The main goal of this project is to develop a new generation of monitoring systems based on RGB, multispectral and thermal cameras combining image processing, Earth Observations (EO), and Artificial Intelligence (AI). The research will build on current knowledge in image-based hydrological monitoring to explore novel advancements in unsupervised computer vision techniques for river monitoring. Camera systems on fixed stations, onboard of drones, and on smartphones will be exploited to collect streamflow observations that will be used to train existing and ad-hoc developed models for the estimation of discharge, solid transport and surface pollutants. The study will be carried out exploiting camera systems combined with satellite observations to interpret the expected impact of climate and land use changes on the hydrological processes and water quality. Satellite and camera observations along with traditional measurements will be used to develop algorithms based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) which will help the description of river hydrological response and water quality parameters. The proposed methodologies will be tested a heavily polluted Italian river, which is also a complex environment to install monitoring networks. Our study site will be the Sarno River, which is considered the most polluted river in Europe and one of the ten most polluted rivers in the world.

Suggested skills:

Hydraulic engineering, image processing, programming, remote sensing and data processing

Research team and environment

HydroLAB coordinated by Prof. Salvatore Manfreda is operating in the department DICEA of the University of Naples Federico II which is a leading institute in hydraulic construction and hydrological studies particularly devoted in the optimization of water management systems. HydroLAB is developing new innovative technologies for environmental monitoring using remote sensing and camera systems. The environment is a stimulating and challenging one with a strong and significant international dimension.