Goulburn-Murray Water (GMW) has recently broken new ground using LiDAR drones.
The water corporation manages 23 major water storages and about 10,000km of delivery and drainage infrastructure across its region.
Surveying these assets to ensure they work safely and effectively is a considerable undertaking, but GMW has sought to streamline it through various innovations.
The most notable recent innovation involves combining two of the water corporation’s most important surveying tools: drones and Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technology.
LiDAR devices are incredibly precise. They work by sending out thousands of laser pulses each second. These pulses hit a surface and bounce back to the device, which can then tell how far away a surface is by processing how long the pulse took to return.
Survey Services Manager Avni Bekirofski said GMW had found a unique application for LiDAR drones.
“As a rural water corporation, we have a lot of large-scale surveys we need to undertake,” he said. “Where possible, we have started using LiDAR drones to complete these surveys and have used them to map large parts of our channel network and even significant pieces of infrastructure such as Dartmouth Dam’s rock step spillway.”
In the case of Dartmouth Dam, a 30-minute flight over the spillway steps sees the drone collect more than 400 million data points.
This data is then downloaded from the LiDAR camera to create a 3D model, commonly called a digital twin.
“The results of the surveys we have completed with LiDAR drones have been very encouraging,” Bekirofski said. “A survey such as the one at Dartmouth would have traditionally been labour intensive, requiring a lot of manual set up. With projects like this, LiDAR drones are far more efficient and provide more comprehensive data.”
In the past, GMW has also used planes or helicopters fitted with LiDAR devices to survey parts of our channel network.
LiDAR drones have proven a far cheaper way to complete these surveys, providing greater flexibility regarding when the survey is completed.
“We always seek to embrace technology and innovation within the Surveying Team,” Bekirofski said. “It’s rewarding to see the efficiencies that come from this, and it is something we are eager to continue going forth.”
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