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GHG Measurement and Quantification Funding

Tue, 22 Aug 2023 08:44:44 GMT

Surveyar continues to push the boundaries of climate science with the development of an integrated solution to measure and quantify Greenhouse Gas for both natural and industrial emission sources and sinks.

HV360: Hybrid Autonomous Greenhouse Gas Emissions Verification (Phase 2)

22/08/2023

Leading governments, agencies and climate organisations (such as UNFCCC, OGMP framework, BEIS, CCAC and EU) have been moving rapidly to enhance the quality of climate change data. Guidance and legislative are changing to require real direct measurement and quantification of greenhouse gases, for both emissions and sinks. This is mainly driven by a greater need for granular evidence to increase reliability in climate decisions, whilst avoiding the complexities in devaluation through greenwashing.

Surveyar Ltd has been awarded a major research and development funded project (SBRI UKRI Innovate UK) which is paired with the nationally strategic Greenhouse Gas Removal – Demonstrator (GGR-D) research programme ( UK invests over £30m in large-scale greenhouse gas removal – UKRI ). The awarded research has a specific focus on development of solutions for Measurement Reporting and Verification (MRV) of Greenhouse Gases.

Surveyar Ltd completed Phase 1 of the MRV Greenhouse Gas project, in March 2023, with successful field trials on the GGR-D Biochar test site ( Biochar - CO₂RE - The Greenhouse Gas Removal Hub (co2re.org) ). The new award for Phase 2 of the programme will allow the development of the technologies, software and workflow as well as field trial demonstration across an extended range of GGR-D projects, including:

peatland (GGR-Peat- removal by accelerated peat formation: UKCEH/ Manchester Uni "Build Back Boggier" | GHG Removal by Accelerated Peat Formation (ggrpeat.org) ),
agricultural (PBC4GGR Perennial Biomass Crops - Aberystwyth University PBC4GGR – Perennial Biomass Crops for Greenhouse Gas Removal ) and
forestry (GGR+ Sustainable Treescapes demonstrator and decision tools: Forest Research Woodland creation and management - CO₂RE - The Greenhouse Gas Removal Hub (co2re.org) ) sites.

The groundbreaking technological solution is intended to allow significant improvement or refinement of GHG inventories, carbon verification schemes, climate based restoration projects and even increase the valuation of carbon credits. The project focus is on evidence-based, transparent GHG quantification with robust reporting of uncertainty to build and underpin credibility and trust.

Surveyar will be working with a range of partners and collaborators including @Manchester University @Mirico, @UKCEH, @Forest Research and @Aberystwyth University.

@Grant Allen; @Judith Thornton; @James Morison, @Ross Morrison, @Sophie Purser

#GHG, #GHG Inventory, #Innovation, #MRV, #ESG, #climate Change, #carbon, #MRV, #Peatland, #Forestry, #Agtech

Surveyar Ltd, 2023

Advanced Remote Sensing for Climate Risks – New Technology Funding

Tue, 06 Jun 2023 13:24:49 GMT

TRIG Funding - ECRA Embankment Climate Risk Assessment

Surveyar have been awarded Transport Research and Innovation Grant (TRIG) funding to support research and development of emerging technologies that will support greater insight and evidence in supporting and prioritising key decisions.

Climate Change means an increase in extreme weather events including wetter winter periods and hotter drier summers. These changes are and will have a profound effect on how we live, from impacts to infrastructure through to how we farm.

We are developing new and innovative processes to help survey and monitor climate changes and impacts using multiband synthetic aperture radar with a range of survey platforms and data fusion techniques. We have partnered with Network Rail to undertake first ever UK trials of the technologies with a solution integrated with unmanned aerial systems platforms to support high resolution outcomes.

A total of 99% of all Network Rail railway embankments and cuttings in the UK were designed and built over 100 years ago. Failures of such embankments are subsequently increasing at a significant rate. Our technology will be used to assess critical factors involved in embankment failures and at varying scales to support slope risk appraisals.

Special thanks to @Armando Marino from #Stirling University for providing research support and to OfCOM for persevering with us and allowing the first UK experimental permit for this technology.

Want to know more… feel free to get in touch.

The TRIG programme helps SMEs and academics develop innovative research projects to improve the transport sector. It is funded by the Department for Transport and run by Connected Places Catapult.

#Remotesensing #climatechange #Innovation #TRIG #Transport #Innovation #Funding

@Connected Places Catapult @Department for Transport

How do we validate emissions estimates using aerial surveys?

williamkirk101@hotmail.com (William Kirk) — Tue, 25 Apr 2023 13:29:23 GMT

Quantifying methane emissions using measurements is a pressing issue. In a recent commentary for the Nature journal ( https://rdcu.be/daGyw ), our partner, Prof Grant Allen, describes how aerial surveys, including aircraft and UAVs, can be used to quantify emissions for comparison with official inventories. Surveyar Ltd is proud to offer a solution to UAV-based greenhouse gas emissions surveys – see Gas Measurement (surveyar.co.uk) for further details and contact us if interested.

MOMENTUM NERC

Fri, 17 Mar 2023 09:21:14 GMT

Major New Research Announcement for Surveyar

SurveyAR will partner with Prof Allen at the University of Manchester on their project - Mobile Observations and quantification of Methane Emissions to inform National Targeting, Upscaling and Mitigation (MOMENTUM). This £1M project is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council and led by Royal Holloway University London and University of Manchester, in partnership with the National Physical Laboratory and the Environmental Defense Fund. This 3-year project will conduct mobile and UAV surveys to quantify methane emissions from specific sectors and UK infrastructure which remain uncertain the UK National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory. SurveyAR will assist with UAV survey design to help University of Manchester quantify emissions from data measured by their onboard Los Gatos Research Hoverguard laser spectrometer. We are excited to contribute toward this important project, which will help the UK assess its trajectory toward Net Zero by identifying and minimizing GHG emissions.

Innovation in Greenhouse Gas and Carbon Capture monitoring

williamkirk101@hotmail.com (William Kirk) — Wed, 07 Dec 2022 16:28:58 GMT

There is a lack of viable techniques to accurately measure greenhouse gas emissions and carbon sinks (fluxes) on a scale relevant to addressing the urgent Net Zero challenge.

Surveyar Ltd and partners Mirico Ltd are poised to disrupt the Net Zero validation market through a critical breakthrough in measuring and quantifying greenhouse gas exchanges, in a project funded by Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency.

Our solution will enhance mobility and reduce costs by using high precision laser spectroscopy and airborne drone platforms to measure a range of gases in three dimensions. This allows quantification of greenhouse gas exchange between the atmosphere and the emitter (or sink), with high accuracy over targeted areas. The innovation will provide an advanced mobile solution for measurement, verification and reporting (MRV) of greenhouse gas impacts and carbon storage from a range of land uses including agriculture, peatland and forestry, as well as industrial facilities.

Initial field trials will be undertaken in collaboration with the UKRI Biochar Greenhouse Gas Removal (GGR) programme led by Nottingham University ( www.ggrprogramme.org.uk ). Professor Colin Snape (principal investigator, Nottingham University) describes the approach as ‘exciting and highly promising measurement approach to quantify net carbon exchange’.

Professor Deborah Roberts (James Hutton Institute) emphasises the research is ‘a vital element in the shift towards sustainable food production systems ’.

Surveyar and Mirico jointly add that ‘ this development will elevate our existing technologies in making a real difference to decision making in the fight for climate change ’.

We are seeking stakeholders and partners to support the development of this solution, please contact @William Kirk.

Drone Pathfinder Programme

williamkirk101@hotmail.com (William Kirk) — Tue, 05 Jul 2022 13:54:17 GMT

Drones Supporting Coastal Erosion Monitoring and Protection

The UK coastline is an evolving landscape, and the effects of climate change are threatening vulnerable coastlines and putting communities, businesses and infrastructure at greater risk from flooding and ero sion.

As part of the Department for Transport funded Drone Pathfinder Catalyst Programme, Connected Places Catapult worked with SurveyAR and the Environment Agency to organise coastal drone surveys to highlight how the Environment Agency, local Risk Management Authorities and other environmental organisations could benefit from using drones.

This case study outlines the economic, social and environmental benefits of using drones for coastal change surveying. With the help of the Environment Agency’s Anglian Coastal Monitoring Programme , it shows how drones could enhance the current suite of coastal survey techniques and explores the benefits of drone gathered data.

Property, asset, infrastructure, and local authority officers who read this document will gain awareness of the capabilities and potential opportunities for drones in environmental monitoring.

Full document located here .

RICS and Coastal Monitoring

williamkirk101@hotmail.com (William Kirk) — Tue, 05 Jul 2022 13:48:28 GMT

How do drone surveys enhance coastal monitoring

The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) have recently published our joint article (working with Catapult Places for People and the Environment Agency along with RICS) on methods and processes for surveying and monitoring our coastal environment using drone and sensor technologies.

You can find the full article here .

Terrain Models

williamkirk101@hotmail.com (William Kirk) — Tue, 05 Jul 2022 13:40:34 GMT

DTM, DTM and CHM from Lidar

Our drone surveys using lidar sensing technologies can provide you with rapid, accurate and repeatable land profiles including in forested & vegetated areas, as well as providing insights into the forests/vegetation themselves.

Lidar surveys also support identification of land features such as archaeology, drainage and man made structures.

Surveys at different times can also be used to calculate volumetric changes in land and vegetation as a consequence of activities in farming, landfilling, quarrying, erosion and development.

Outputs such as raster layers, point clouds and meshes can easily be integrated into GIS and other packages for easy analysis alongside your existing data.

Our Lidar surveys from drone platforms can achieve c.500points/m2 with <5cm real-world accuracy. Surveys provide a high level of coverage for any site, overcoming access issues which typically hinder ground based GPS survey. The key benefits in lidar use is the ability to produce digital surface, digital terrain and canopy height models (DTM, DSM and CHM), which cannot be produced using photogrammetry.

Lidar surveys can also be paired with high resolution imaging, multispectral and radiometric sensing to provide cost-effective high-level insights.

Building the Future to Net Zero

williamkirk101@hotmail.com (William Kirk) — Tue, 21 Sep 2021 15:16:02 GMT

Welcome Professor Grant Allen

Surveyar is working hard on developing new technologies that will support useful measurements of changing gas conditions resulting from industry, land use and land use changes. With a range of research and development projects examining different use cases and a growing list of supporting world leading institutions it is good timing then that one of the global leaders in atmospheric science and in particular methane has joined the growing team at Surveyar.

Prof Grant Allen leads a greenhouse gas emissions measurement group at the University of Manchester, where he developed world-first capability in the quantification of methane and carbon dioxide emissions using unmanned aerial systems (aka drones). Grant is an ex-pilot and ESA astronaut candidate with a PhD in satellite infrared remote sensing of atmospheric composition. As a field specialist, Grant has led international research campaigns to study manmade and natural-world greenhouse gas emissions in Australia, Africa, the Arctic and South America. Grant is a highly published expert in optical sensors, atmospheric sampling and remote sensing, meteorology, and emissions quantification.

Grants impressive capabilities will allow us to accelerate our planned research and development with our objective of providing a range of commercial solutions. Solutions which are essential to understanding and making the best informed evidenced based decisions in our journey to achieving net zero.

https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/grant.allen.html

Welcome Alex Grenyer

williamkirk101@hotmail.com (William Kirk) — Tue, 21 Sep 2021 14:57:01 GMT

The first new start in the new Cranfield Office

Alex has just completed his PhD at Cranfield University focussing on 'uncertainties manifested in industrial maintenance' with respect to the aerospace sector. His keen engineering and product focus will help support Surveyar with our growing list of leading edge research and development projects, particularly in swarm drone technologies.

Dragonfly

williamkirk101@hotmail.com (William Kirk) — Fri, 30 Jul 2021 08:19:10 GMT

Integrating technology for advanced remote survey

We are excited to….

Introduce our newly developed Dragonfly (remotely piloted aircraft system) heavy lift hexacopter built with a base payload of multiple leading-edge sensor technologies (hi-res imaging, LiDAR, multispectral and thermal). The Dragonfly has been developed to support a fully integrated, higher quality and more intelligent environmental survey while still having sufficient payload capacity to allow a range of options (Hyperspectral, GPR, Sonar, Magnetics, air/water sampling). The Dragonfly has flexibility built in, with capability of landing in water and working in a range of harsher environments.

We have developed this platform to respond to the multiple and evolving needs/challenges of our clients in undertaking cost effective, very high quality, environmental surveys in support of baseline land condition, peatland condition, habitat survey, catchment modelling, flood risk and biomass assessment etc. We can provide the outcome data raw, processed using modelling packages or use gaming tech, digital twins or GIS.

Surveyar Ltd are pushing the boundaries for how RPAS can be applied effectively in remote environmental survey. We can work with you as surveyors, supply systems/build capacity or work as supporting contractors.

Join our innovation journey…

Surveyar Awarded R&D project with DfT/Connected Places

williamkirk101@hotmail.com (William Kirk) — Wed, 07 Jul 2021 10:38:59 GMT

Swarm Drones for Environmental Survey

We’ve been busy at SurverAR developing our drone-based sensing solutions for land-managers, industry, and regulatory authorities using our wide-ranging UAS, sensor and data processing/visualisation skills.

As part of our drive for innovative and timely solutions to address pressing environmental challenges, we are very pleased to announce that we have been awarded a department for transport D-TRIG grant delivered through the Connected Places Catapult. This is a fantastic opportunity for us to assess and develop an autonomous drone swarm system to optimise weather and air quality monitoring on local scales; of particular importance in urban and industrial areas. Do consider following us for updates on this (and other!) projects.

Congratulations to the other winners: PILOTAWARE LIMITED, Rinicom Ltd, Sky Tech, SNOWDONIA AEROSPACE LLP and Motion-Robotics Ltd. We look forward to working on our project as part of the D-TRIG cohort.

See here for more details:
Post | LinkedIn

SurveyAr works in R&D and Reseller partnership with UgCS

PAR002_123@heg.com — Tue, 12 Jan 2021 19:27:51 GMT

SurveyAR and UgCS (and SPH Engineering) have agreed to work collaboratively within the UK on projects that utilise their array of geophysical sensors.

Research and Development

The recent gro wth and development of un-manned aerial platforms particularly in positional capabilities, enhanced flight management systems and greater lift capacity has allowed the commercial world to consider a range of new possibilities, moving beyond photogrammetry. Taking the knowledge, experience and hardware that UgCS have acquired directly and with their partners throughout the globe presents a unique opportunity to project the ideas further. Particularly in the realm of traditional geophysical sensors, we can work collaboratively to explore possibilities for enhancement and integration in scenarios and use cases that have not been considered previously or have thought not to be possible.

We have already started a number of projects, R&D programmes and test evaluations of the sensing technologies in unique scenarios and use cases. We are also happy to work with private sector and institutions in capacity building and working collaboratively.

Reseller

We are happy to provide guidance and a route into purchasing software, sensor and infrastructure equipment for their own UAS platforms. For an outline please visit the Reseller Page or connect with the UgCS link above.

SurveyAR explores R&D collaboration with James Hutton Institute

PAR002_123@heg.com — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 19:27:52 GMT

SurveyAR and the Hutton Institute have agreed to explore the possibility of collaboration, capacity building and R&D opportunities for a number of possible scenario cases.

The James Hutton Institute combines strengths in crops, soils and land use and environmental research, and makes a major contribution to the understanding of key global issues, such as food, energy and environmental security, and developing and promoting effective technological and management solutions to these.

SurveyAR, as a technology organisation working on extracting more data from sensing technology, integrating technology solutions and innovating on the use and application of UAS for monitoring and sampling ....provides potential useful synergy and out of the box commercial thinking on different approaches to age old problems.

We are looking forward to working with the Hutton Institute to gain valuable insight.

New approaches to surveying farmland

PAR002_123@heg.com — Mon, 16 Nov 2020 19:27:52 GMT

Surveying large areas of farmland with specialist sensors, utilising hundreds of satellite and GIS datasets and application of games engine technologies is not the thing of the future, its happening now.

We have already explored and are, in fact, still exploring a number of specialist workflow solutions for farmers, land owners and estate managers. Farmers and landowners understand their land very well, after all they have lived and breathed the air, stalked across the muddy fields and watched daily the growth of their crops. However, with advancing technology we can now place a wholly new set of tools and solutions to help the farmers, land owners and estate managers balance efficiency, funding and their stewardship for our environment.

While we delve into our own toolbox of sensors it is apparent that each sensor solution may be able to provide a good insight into a farming area, but perhaps only a partial insight. However, by integrating the sensors or managing the data from multiple sensor technologies whilst using available satellite and GIS data provides a whole new frontier of valuable data. Putting this vast array of highly technical data into an accessible useable deliverable that is affordable and viable is quite challenging. We are up to an interesting challenge.

Proven technology sensors in support of typically high intensity farming includes basic photogrammetry and the use of multispectral sensors. Photogrammetry is essentially overlapping photography from a drone processed using advanced software to generate a point cloud, mesh, mosiac and then textured 3D model providing a reasonably good terrain model and visual representation of a farm/land area. Multispectral uses light sensing in specific bands (normally within 5 to 10 light band ranges, some beyond the visible spectrum) with different light bands representative of different features such as moisture, chlorophyll, crop health and geological features. The multispectral data can be used to show how well crops and vegetation are growing. More advanced assessments can be applied by using algorithms on relative light band absorbed, giving even more insight (NDRE, NDVI, OSAVI, CIR etc) on factors such as disease, moisture, relative growth rates and soil minerals.

This proven technology can be (relatively cheaply) significantly enhanced through comparison and assessment of existing datasets. There are two forms (a) curated data, typically held on GIS including everything from history, ecology/habitat, geology, hydrology, hydrogeology, soil maps, protected areas etc; and (2) observed data, typically from orbiting satellites that can serve up time sequenced terrain, multispectral and thermal datasets. Both can be set up as direct data feeds to a management system to provide better context and triage on decision making processes.

SurveyAR are in the process of exploration of additional sensing technologies from geophysics through to hyperspectral in a journey intended to give farmers and landowners much more insight. However, much of the focus is currently on the building of platforms (digital twins) that can be used effectively to absorb data feeds from current as well as survey or real time monitoring (or even forecasting) whilst providing a visual tool of accessible insight to the user and their stakeholders. All the sensing data on the planet is absolutely useless unless the user can access, use, understand, take action on it and then ultimately see the consequences of the action.