Drone-Based Mapping and Monitoring of the Coast

Written by Charlotte Synnøve Garmann-Johnsen

On the 23rd of September, The Norwegian Water Association hosted an event on drone-based mapping and surveillance of the coast. The focus of the event was on SeaBee, a new Norwegian infrastructure where drones and advanced sensors can deliver data and results on several applications relevant for water. SeaBee can be used for mapping of diverse types of nature and species in shallow marine areas, counting of seabirds and marine mammals, and can be used to estimate water quality.

SeaBee includes several national institutions, that together contributes with competence within drone flying, analysing pictures with artificial intelligence, handling of data and online visualisation. It also includes acquisition of field data for validating of the drone results.

Firstly, Kasper Hancke, senior researcher at NIVA, The Norwegian Institute for Water Research, gave his presentation. Hancke is leading NIVAs research and development activities related to drones for environmental research and coordinating the SeaBee infrastructure. The project is coordinated from NIVA but have several partner organisations. NINA, The Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, contributes with nature research. NTNU, The Norwegian University of Science and Technology, is working on the engineering part. The Norwegian Computing Center is working on the AI computer. The Institute of Marine research is working on the marine mammals. GRID-Arendal is working on the communication. In addition, there are two industry partners contributing to the infrastructure: namely Tiepoint and Spectrofly. The project is funded by The Research Council of Norway.

“The team of SeaBee is doing something no one has done before, combining the knowledge and the end users in marine biology, with engineers and computer scientists, putting all of their expertise together is really a key point in developing a novel toolbox,” says Kasper Hancke.

Anders Gjørwad Hagen, senior researcher at NIVA, elaborated on ground truthing, which is checking that the area being is monitored matches up with the drone imagery. This creates the perfect combination of human and machine.

Robert Dreier Holand from Tiepoint went on to talk about the rules and regulations for flying drones. He explained how you must take a course to be certified, and that they have had a few hundred who has taken their courses.

Afterwards Kristina Øie Kvile, scientist from NIVA talked about how they can use the drones in mapping of seaweed, kelp and eelgrass and monitoring of algal blooms. It can also be used to count seabirds, marine mammals, and shells. . It can be hard for the machines to understand what is on the images, so now they have developed systems that are constantly being updated to help this classification.

Chief engineer Sindre Molværsmyr from NINA went on to talk about the stock estimation of sea birds and marine mammals. Traditionally when they counted sea birds, they would have to walk onto an island and one of the challenges was that the birds could get quite angry. If they compare this with SeaBee, where they use a small drone and a boat to get near the island, and start the drone from the boat, and not entering the island, they see that this disturbs the birds a lot less.  

Then Arnt-Børre Salberg, senior engineer from The Norwegian Computing Center talked about image analysis and use of artificial intelligence. He discussed some of the challenges with AI, but also explained how SeaBee has handled them. On the way forward he says that SeaBee will use so called ground models (the same as ChatGPT), make the annotations easier and use more satellite data.

Second to last, James Edward Sample, senior engineer from NIVA spoke about data handling, sharing and visualisation. One of the main goals of the SeaBee platform is to make SeaBee data available so that members of the public can use them as they wish. He went on to explain how data flows between the various aspects of the SeaBee structure.

Lastly, Hege Gundersen, senior researcher at NIVA and co-lead on SeaBee spoke about the potential and relevance of SeaBee in water and coastal management. She discussed the so far unused potential of SeaBee in monitoring of invasive species like Pacific Oysters, or monitoring for commercial purposes, like in kelp cultivation. Maybe you have a use of SeaBee? Maybe you work in a municipality that knows its species on land, but not in the ocean, or maybe you work in the County administration and wonder how much carbon is stored in blue forests surrounding your area. Maybe you’re a manager or a researcher and have a good idea on how to use SeaBee? 

The potential for using SeaBee and continuing this project is still high and it is with great anticipation we look forward to how SeaBee will be applied in the future.

https://www.tekna.no/fag-og-nettverk/miljo-og-biovitenskap/bio-og-klimabloggen/dronebasert-kartlegging-og-overvaking-av-kysten/