AERIAL PLATFORM RELIABILITY FOR FLOOD MONITORING UNDER VARIOUS WEATHER CONDITIONS: A REVIEW

Abstract. Flood is an annual disaster in Malaysia, especially in the east coast region. Recently, other regions in Malaysia have also experience devastating flood. A flood aerial monitoring is one of the approaches that involved in the flood disaster management. Compared to space borne remote sensing, aerial platforms are much reliable to obtain higher spatial resolution and real time data. Due to cloud coverage and revisit limitations, space borne remote sensing approach is a less desirable option for flood monitoring. In this paper, a review of existing aerial platforms that perform remote sensing task under various weather conditions, specifically for flood monitoring is presented. There are four types of aerial platforms being reviewed, which are rotary wings, fixed wings, blimps and helikites. The main criteria of the review are the payload capacity, endurance (flight time), altitudes, tolerable wind speed, cost, vertical take-off and landing ability, and the ability to perform under various weather conditions, such as heavy precipitation and winds. From this review, the applications of aerial platform in recent studies never mentioned the capability of aerial platform used in such weather conditions. From all types of aerial platform discussed, helikite seems to be the most suitable to fly in extreme weather. The only drawback is that helikite has mobility issue since it is tethered to the ground. The application of helikite is useful for a small area coverage of flood monitoring. The authors will continue the study to evaluate the reliability of helikite in performing such task in the future.