Research & Scholarly Activity

UAV Remote Sensing

Remote sensing with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is a game-changer in geosceince, agriculture, and surface data collection . It not only offers unprecedented spectral, spatial, and temporal resolution, but also provides unprecedented detailed vegetation height data and multiangular observations. UAV data collection is rather new and needs planning in advance, we have developed tools for this task to design flight route, calculate optimal cross-over, and optimal flight altitutde and speed. Our first UAV remote sensing study is on canopy density , which includes 2 different flight routes (that covers ~12 acres) with different objectives. Further details of this study and collected data will be provided in Data.                  

Urban Planning and Development by UAVs

Traditional urban development methods were based on field data collection, surveying, and analysis. In site surveying, data collections, and data quality control has always been a challenge for engineers and city planners. Rapid urbanization rates combined with climatic changes results in unprecedented impacts which require new technologies such as UAV application to to improve cost and effectiveness of data collection and surveying.                   

Socioeconomic Drought in Trans-Boundary Bains

Socioeconomic drought as one of the most frequent natural disasters is broadly referred to conditions whereby the water supply cannot satisfy the demand. Reservoirs play a key role in water supply and demand management, which provide resilience to cope with climate extremes. Building resilience to socioeconomic droughts is a complex process that involves climatic factors, human water-use behavior, the governance systems, and stakeholders with wide-ranging authorities. This study focuses on cascade reservoirs role through socioeconomic drought and tracks water deficit from the upstream reservoir of the basin.