Biodiversity monitoring using UAV and 4D monitoring technologies: GeoSUB project

Abstract

The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) has increased in the last decade, using these technologies for many different topics, such as infrastructure inspection or biodiversity monitoring. The main advantages of these systems are its reduced cost and its ability to navigate on hard-accessible areas, what makes it possible to acquire aerial data with a reduced cost. The new technological developments and the progress in the definition of the regulations applicable to these vehicles have allowed the first BVLOS (Beyond Visual Line of Sight) operations to begin to be carried out at a professional level, which has meant a great advance for the UAV sector. In this field, Telespazio Ibérica SLU is leading a project called GEOSUB, which objective is the development of a UAV integral solution for biodiversity monitoring. The project has two main parts. The first one is the evolution and improvement of a fixed-wing and multicopter UAV, equipped with four different sensors: RGB camera, multispectral camera, thermographic camera, and a LiDAR sensor. The second part focused on the development of a geoinformation processing platform for both the mission planification and monitoring, and the data processing to obtain the final product. This work presents the preliminary results of the project and goes in depth with the developments made.