Drone hyperspectral system for monitoring coastal bathing water quality

Abstract

The bathing water quality is an essential issue because of the consequences for the public health of the coastline users that make an extensive recreational use of it, even more in tourist areas. Overpopulation of coastlines generates large volumes of wastewater that must be treated as a prior step to its discharge into the coastal outfalls. In order to carry out a control of the wastewater treatment and discharge process, it is necessary to monitor the discharge points through a systematic and costly in-situ sampling analyzed in laboratory for the detection of bacterial pathogens. This requirement of bathing water monitoring made clear thanks to the European directive 2006/7/CE of February 15, 2006. This complex and slow procedure does not allow obtaining early alerts of the presence of pathogens because the biological bacterial analysis method require a minimum of three days. We propose, the use of a hyperspectral camera aboard a drone in order to monitor the bathing water by using the Radiative Transfer Model (RTM) to obtain indicators of the presence of bacterial pathogens. In this way, this paper presents the first preliminary results of our study.