Proposition of Online UAV-Based Pollutant Detector and Tracker for Narrow-Basin Rivers: A Case Study on Litani River

Litani River is one of the most important water sources in Lebanon; nevertheless, it suffers from high level of water pollution. This fact poses risks to human health and safety, threatens animal and agricultural resources, and impacts the economy. The lack of real-time information about the environmental condition is the major cause behind poor managing and controlling of environmental disasters. Besides, Litani River is a long narrow-basin river. Hence, traditional methods and satellite-based remote sensing techniques are ineffective and aggravate overheads in terms of labor, time, and cost. The proposed approach makes use of the availability and the affordability of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to circumvent the limited capabilities of currently available methods dedicated to water pollution detection and tracking. The main objective of the proposed approach is to provide a novel solution that can assist the government authorities to enhance their ability to detect water pollution and track the sources of pollutants. It aims to demonstrate an effective low-cost tool that enables real-time detection of pollutants, identifying their nature, specifying their location, and tracking their sources. The usage of UAVs equipped with real-time image-processing modules enables efficient remote monitoring of water streams. It may highly contribute in avoiding environmental disasters rather than reacting afterwards.