RiGHt: River Level Monitoring using GPS Heighting

Terry Moore, Gareth Close and Roger Moore

Abstract:	The RiGHt project, 'River Level Monitoring using GPS Heighting', has been carried out over the last two years. This was a collaborative project involving the University of Nottingham, Science Systems (Space) Ltd and The Institute of Hydrology, and was supported through a grant awarded by the British National Space Centre (BNSC), under the UK Government’s Space Foresight Programme. The objectives of the project are to address the problems of continuously monitoring river heights at any location in the World, using a remote floating platform. The RiGHt project has developed a space-based real-time river level monitoring system using the real time kinematic GPS, satellite communications and a Geographical Information System (GIS). A GPS receiver was mounted on a river buoy together with other sensors for attitude determination of the buoy. Communication satellites, or terrestrial communications may be used for the real-time data-link between the buoy and a GPS reference station. A novel 4-D GIS was used to visualize real-time water level information and analyze and manage other hydrological information. Full trials of the complete system, including the prototype buoy, the communications systems, and the GIS software interfaces, were carried out in early February 2000. A site was selected on the River Trent, in Nottingham, which is very close to the Colwick river gauging station. The gauging station building provided ideal accommodation for the GPS reference station and the communications equipment, and the necessary power and security. For practical convenience the GIS packages and interfaces were also operated close by, but could have been at a distant location. All aspects of the river monitoring system were operated in real-time, although terrestrial communications were used for these trials, rather than the satellite link. The trials demonstrated the capability of the RiGHt system to determine river levels, in real-time, and to a centimetric level of accuracy. The full results from these trials are presented in this paper.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 13th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 2000) September 19 - 22, 2000 Salt Palace Convention Center Salt Lake City, UT
Pages:	1840 - 1844
Cite this article:	Moore, Terry, Close, Gareth, Moore, Roger, "RiGHt: River Level Monitoring using GPS Heighting," Proceedings of the 13th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 2000), Salt Lake City, UT, September 2000, pp. 1840-1844.
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