Book Chapter

A drone’s eye view: A preliminary assessment of the efficiency of drones in mapping shallow-water benthic assemblages

  • Andrea Francesca Bellia
  • Julian Evans
  • Sandro Lanfranco

The study assesses consumer drone efficiency for surveying shallow-water benthic cover. We hypothesised that using a drone would reduce duration, and manpower requirements, while increasing accuracy, relative to manual surveys. Results obtained during this study clearly indicated that automated drone surveys were faster and more accurate than manual survey methods under most circumstances. This result has important implications for the scientific and economic aspects of the process and would have a multiplicative effect in monitoring programs that require regular surveys.

  • Keywords:
  • Drones,
  • Drone survey,
  • Benthic mapping,
  • Aerial imagery,
  • Image analysis,
  • k-clustering,
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Andrea Francesca Bellia

University of Malta, Malta - ORCID: 0000-0001-7426-6141

Julian Evans

University of Malta, Malta - ORCID: 0000-0001-7837-5927

Sandro Lanfranco

University of Malta, Malta - ORCID: 0000-0002-0360-7065

  1. Bellia, A. F., & Lanfranco, S. (2019). A Preliminary Assessment of the Efficiency of Using Drones in Land Cover Mapping. Xjenza, 7(1), 18-27. DOI: 10.7423/XJENZA.2019.1.02
  2. Blondeau-Patissier, D., Gower, J. F., Dekker, A. G., Phinn, S. R., & Brando, V. E. (2014). A review of ocean color remote sensing methods and statistical techniques for the detection, mapping and analysis of phytoplankton blooms in coastal and open oceans DOI: 10.1016/j.pocean.2013.12.008
  3. Ng, H. P., Ong, S. H., Foong, K. W. C., Goh, P. S., & Nowinski, W. L. (2006). Medical image segmentation using k-means clustering and improved watershed algorithm. In 2006 IEEE southwest symposium on image analysis and interpretation (pp. 61-65). IEEE. DOI: 10.1109/SSIAI.2006.1633722
  4. Orlando-Bonaca, M., Lipej, L., & Orfanidis, S. (2008). Benthic macrophytes as a tool for delineating, monitoring and assessing ecological status: the case of Slovenian coastal waters. Marine pollution bulletin, 56(4), 666-676. DOI: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2007.12.018
  5. Schneider, C. A., Rasband, W. S., & Eliceiri, K. W. (2012). NIH Image to ImageJ: 25 years of image analysis. Nature methods, 9(7), 671. DOI: 10.1038/nmeth.2089
  6. Spellerberg, I. F., & Fedor, P. J. (2003). A tribute to Claude Shannon (1916–2001) and a plea for more rigorous use of species richness, species diversity and the ‘Shannon–Wiener’ Index. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 12(3), 177-179. DOI: 10.1046/j.1466-822X.2003.00015.x
  7. Ventura, D., Bonifazi, A., Gravina, M. F., Belluscio, A., & Ardizzone, G. (2018). Mapping and Classification of Ecologically Sensitive Marine Habitats Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Imagery and Object-Based Image Analysis (OBIA). Remote Sensing, 10(9 DOI: 10.3390/rs10091331
PDF
  • Publication Year: 2020
  • Pages: 501-509
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
  • © 2020 Author(s)

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  • Publication Year: 2020
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
  • © 2020 Author(s)

Chapter Information

Chapter Title

A drone’s eye view: A preliminary assessment of the efficiency of drones in mapping shallow-water benthic assemblages

Authors

Andrea Francesca Bellia, Julian Evans, Sandro Lanfranco

Language

English

DOI

10.36253/978-88-5518-147-1.50

Peer Reviewed

Publication Year

2020

Copyright Information

© 2020 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Bibliographic Information

Book Title

Eighth International Symposium “Monitoring of Mediterranean Coastal Areas. Problems and Measurement Techniques”

Book Subtitle

Livorno (Italy) June 2020

Editors

Laura Bonora, Donatella Carboni, Matteo De Vincenzi

Peer Reviewed

Publication Year

2020

Copyright Information

© 2020 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Publisher Name

Firenze University Press

DOI

10.36253/978-88-5518-147-1

eISBN (pdf)

978-88-5518-147-1

eISBN (xml)

978-88-5518-148-8

Series Title

Proceedings e report

Series ISSN

2704-601X

Series E-ISSN

2704-5846

372

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