Mapping bathymetry based on waterlines observed from low altitude Helikite remote sensing platform

Abstract

Mapping shoreline changes along coastal regions is critically important in monitoring continuously rising sea surface heights due to climate change and frequent severe storms. Thus, it is especially important if the region has very high tidal ranges over very gentle tidal flats, which is a very vulnerable region. Although the various remote sensing platforms can be used to map shoreline changes, the spatial and temporal resolutions are not enough to obtain it for a short time. Accordingly, in this study we introduce the newly developed low altitude Helikite remote sensing platform to achieve much better resolutions of shorelines and a bathymetry. The Helikite stands for Helium balloon and Kite, which is a kind of aerial platform that uses the advantages of both a Helium balloon and a kite. Field experiments were conducted in the Jaebu Island, off the coast of the west Korean Peninsula in January 29, 2011. In order to extract shorelines from the consecutive images taken by the low altitude Helikite remote sensing platform, active contours without edges (ACWE) is used. Edges or boundaries exist primarily on places between one type of objective and the other. Since the hydrodynamic pressure has an effect everywhere, the locations of the waterlines can be the isobath lines. We could map several waterlines, which would enable us to complete a local bathymetry map ranges from 35 to 60 cm depth. The error resulting from applying ACWE algorithm to the imagery to determine the waterline is approximately less than 1 m. Therefore, it is very unique way to obtain such high resolutions of bathymetry with high accuracy for the regions of extremely high tidal ranges for a short time.