Floating Sensor Networks for River Studies

Tinka, Andrew; Rafiee, Mohammad Rafie; Bayen, Alexandre M.

doi:10.1109/jsyst.2012.2204914

Cited by 35 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…To understand the motion of particles within the junction, Lagrangian drifters were released on June 1 and June 8, 2012 when the DCC was open and closed, respectively. Fourteen Android phone surface drifters, built at the University of California at Berkeley for their Floating Sensor Project (http:// float.berkeley.edu) (Tinka et al 2013), and nine drifters with 1-m long water sails borrowed from the USGS California Water Science Center were deployed throughout the GSJ. Drifters were released in groups of 1 to 13 for deployments ranging from 1 to 9 hours and were typically retrieved when they drifted downstream or were trapped in dense vegetation.…”

Section: Drifter Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dispersion Mechanisms of a Tidal River Junction in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta, California

Gleichauf¹,

Wolfram²,

Monsen³

et al. 2014

SFEWS

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In branching channel networks, such as in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, junction flow dynamics contribute to dispersion of ecologically important entities such as fish, pollutants, nutrients, salt, sediment, and phytoplankton. Flow transport through a junction largely arises from velocity phasing in the form of divergent flow between junction channels for a portion of the tidal cycle. Field observations in the Georgiana Slough junction, which is composed of the North and South Mokelumne rivers, Georgiana Slough, and the Mokelumne River, show that flow phasing differences between these rivers arise from operational, riverine, and tidal forcing. A combination of Acoustic Doppler Current Profile (ADCP) boat transecting and moored ADCPs over a spring-neap tidal cycle (May to June 2012) monitored the variability of spatial and temporal velocity, respectively. Two complementary drifter studies enabled assessment of local transport through the junction to identify small-scale intrajunction dynamics. We supplemented field results with numerical simulations using the SUNTANS model to demonstrate the importance of phasing offsets for junction transport and dispersion. Different phasing of inflows to the junction resulted in scalar patchiness that is characteristic of MacVean and Stacey's (2011) advective tidal trapping. Furthermore, we observed smallscale junction flow features including a recirculation zone and shear layer, which play an important role in intra-junction mixing over time scales shorter than the tidal cycle (i.e., super-tidal time scales). The study period spanned open-and closed-gate operations at the Delta Cross Channel. Synthesis of field observations and modeling efforts suggest that management operations related to the Delta Cross Channel can strongly affect transport in the Delta by modifying the relative contributions of tidal and riverine flows, thereby changing the junction flow phasing. KEYWORDS Junction dispersion, flow phasing, tidal trapping, super-tidal time scales, Delta Cross Channel Hydrodynamic processes in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta affect ecosystem function through the transport of salt, sediments, heat, contaminants including selenium and ammonium, and,

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Section: Drifter Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dispersion Mechanisms of a Tidal River Junction in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta, California

Gleichauf¹,

Wolfram²,

Monsen³

et al. 2014

SFEWS

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“…This is an important constraint because it determines vehicle's effectiveness as a Lagrangian sensor. Previous studies have indicated that Lagrangian sensors must maximize their cross‐sectional area to flow and should present a roughly symmetric drag profile (Tinka et al., ). To ensure that the vehicle is appropriate for Lagrangian sensing, its hull is a vertically oriented cylinder.…”

Section: Floating Sensor Network System Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, short‐range radio RF communication links are suitable technologies for inland studies because radio base stations can be set up with nearby infrastructure. GPS‐carrying river drifters have been the focus of development by the FSN project at University of California, Berkeley (Tinka, Rafiee, & Bayen, ), and other groups (Perez, Bonner, Kelly, & Fuller, ; Austin & Atkinson, ). As well, studies in regions with well‐developed civilian infrastructure, such as the continental United States, can take advantage of the mobile phone network for communications.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Heterogeneous Fleets of Active and Passive Floating Sensors for River Studies

Tinka

Weekly

et al. 2015

J. Field Robotics

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Lagrangian sensing for tracing hydrodynamic trajectories is an innovative approach for studying estuarial environments. Actuated Lagrangian sensors are capable of avoiding obstacles and navigating when active and retain a passive hydrodynamic profile that is suited for Lagrangian sensing when passive. A heterogeneous fleet of actuated and passive drifting sensors is presented. Data assimilation using a high-performance computing (HPC) cluster that runs the ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) is an essential component of the estuarial state estimation system. The performance of the mixed capability fleet and the data assimilation backend is evaluated in the context of a landmark 96-unit river study in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta region of California. C 2015Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Passive drifters have proved very successful for oceanographic applications, where fixed infrastructure can be impractical to install. A logical extension of the oceanographic research in Lagrangian sensing is to develop sensors for nearshore environments such as rivers and bays. Lagrangian sensors can be used in this context to better monitor the flow of freshwater and the transport of constituents therein. Specific examples include assessing vulnerabilities to contaminant spills or infrastructure failure in Journal of Field Robotics DOI 10.1002/rob Tinka et al.: Heterogeneous Fleets of Active and Passive Floating Sensors • 3 Contributions of this ArticleThis article presents a system-level description of a heterogeneous FSN, including actuated drifters, passive drifters, and communication relays; the description of a field operation to demonstrate system functionality and to validate core assumptions about drifter operations in estuarial environments; an analysis of the utility of the actuation capability of the active component of the fleet; the design and implementation of a back-end data assimilation server cluster; and an analysis of the assimilation system performance and output using the data gathered in these experiments. This experiment represents a significant step in the deployment of autonomous floating robotics systems in unstructured natural environments. To our knowledge, this experiment is the first of its kind in the field of estuarial hydrodynamics Journal of Field Robotics

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“…This experiment and the extended Kalman filter (EKF) analysis was first described by Tinka and Rafiee. 13 For the experiment, drifters were deployed into the supply canal upstream of the levee breach, shown in Figure 20. The upstream boundary condition was the supply canal flow control, set to 1.42 m 3 /s; the downstream boundary condition was a gate that could be raised or lowered to restrict the flow out of the experimental region.…”

Section: Us Army Corps Of Engineersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design of a network of robotic Lagrangian sensors for shallow water environments with case studies for multiple applications

Oroza

Tinka

Wright

et al. 2013

Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part C:

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This article describes the design methodology for a network of robotic Lagrangian floating sensors designed to perform real-time monitoring of water flow, environmental parameters, and bathymetry of shallow water environments (bays, estuarine, and riverine environments). Unlike previous Lagrangian sensors which passively monitor water velocity, the sensors described in this article can actively control their trajectory on the surface of the water and are capable of intersensor communication. The addition of these functionalities enables Lagrangian sensing in obstacle-encumbered environments, such as rivers. The Ishikawa cause and effect design framework is used to ensure that the final system synthesizes the diverse operational and functional needs of multiple end-user groups to arrive at a broadly applicable system design. A summary of potential applications for the system is given including completed projects performed on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security, Office of Naval Research, and the California Bay-Delta Authority.

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Floating Sensor Networks for River Studies

Cited by 35 publications

References 25 publications

Dispersion Mechanisms of a Tidal River Junction in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta, California

Dispersion Mechanisms of a Tidal River Junction in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta, California

Heterogeneous Fleets of Active and Passive Floating Sensors for River Studies

Design of a network of robotic Lagrangian sensors for shallow water environments with case studies for multiple applications

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