Journal of Korea Water Resources Association ISSN:2799-8746(Print) 2799-8754(Online) 한국수자원학회 논문집

This study aimed to develop a flow measurement method using drone in flood season. Measuring flow in all branches is difficult to conduct annually due to budget and labor limitation, safety and river works. Especially when heavy rain like storm comes, changes in stage-discharge relationship should be reviewed; however, it is usually impeded by the aforementioned issues. To solve the problem, it developed a simple measuring method with a minimum of labor and time. A numeric map and numeric orthophoto coordinate of South Korea are mostly based on Transverse Mercator Projection (TM) in accordance with rectangular coordinate system and use World Geodetic Reference System 1980 (GRS80) oval figure for conversion. Applying a concept of aerial photogrammetry, it located four visible Ground Control Points (GCP) near the river at Uijeongbu-si (Singok Bridge) and Yeongdong-gun (Youngdong 2nd Bridge) station and measured the coordinates using VRS DGPS. Hovering at a same level, drones took orthophoto of water surface at an interval of 3 seconds. It defined the pictures with GRS80 TM coordinate system, a rectangular coordinate system and then conducted an orthometric correction using GCP coordinates. According to X and Y coordinate analysis, it estimated the distance between the floating positions at 3 seconds-intervals and calculated the flow through the flow area according to the flow path. This study attested applicability of the flow measurement method using drone in flood season by applying the rectangular coordinate system based on the concept of aerial photogrammetry.