River flow monitoring for the water damage restoration project of the Hydrological and Water Resources Survey Center

Water Surveyor assists in the water damage restoration project of Lanxi Hydrological Station: Mobile radar wave flow measurement system for river flow monitoring

In 2024, the Bridges and equipment downstream of Longyan Lanxi Hydrological Station were damaged by water

I. Project Background

River course at the project site

Hydrological stations are key infrastructure for obtaining hydrological information and play a crucial role in flood control and disaster reduction, water resources management, and the construction and operation of water conservancy projects. The water damage repair project of the Hydrological and Water Resources Survey center is usually initiated when the hydrological monitoring facilities are damaged after natural disasters such as floods and heavy rain. These disasters may cause damage to river flow monitoring equipment, affecting the accurate monitoring of river flow and thereby weakening the support capacity for flood warning, water resource allocation and other work. Therefore, the restoration and construction of river flow monitoring systems are of great significance for enhancing hydrological monitoring capabilities, safeguarding people's lives and property, and rationally developing and utilizing water resources.

The flood water level at Lanxi Hydrological Station of Longyan Hydrological Sub-Center in 2024

Ii. Current Problems

Damage to monitoring facilities: Natural disasters such as floods may wash away key monitoring equipment like water level gauges and flow meters, resulting in the inability to collect data normally.

Insufficient monitoring accuracy: The measurement error of the damaged equipment increases, which cannot meet the requirements of high-precision flow monitoring.

Low degree of automation: Traditional manual observation or semi-automatic monitoring methods are difficult to effectively collect and transmit data during disasters, and cannot achieve real-time monitoring and timely early warning.

Difficulty in data integration: The data formats collected by different monitoring devices are not uniform, making it difficult to carry out effective integration and analysis, which affects decision support.

Iii. Solution Approach

Repair and upgrade monitoring equipment: Repair or replace damaged water level gauges, flow meters and other equipment, and select new monitoring equipment with high precision and high reliability to improve monitoring accuracy.

Enhance the level of automation: Introduce an automated monitoring system to achieve automatic data collection, transmission and processing, reduce manual intervention, and improve monitoring efficiency and the timeliness of data.

Build a unified data platform: Establish a unified hydrological data management platform to integrate and standardize data from different sources, achieve data sharing and comprehensive analysis, and provide comprehensive and accurate basis for decision-making.

Strengthen flood early warning capabilities: By using advanced flow monitoring equipment and data analysis models, accurately predict flood flow and water level changes in a timely manner, issue early warning information in advance, and gain time for flood control and disaster reduction work.

The flow measurement system participated in the construction by Wuhan Shuichejia Technology

IV. Hardware Perception System

Water level monitoring equipment: Deploy high-precision radar water level gauges or pressure water level gauges, which can monitor the changes in river water levels in real time. They feature rapid response and high-precision measurement, and are not affected by environmental light or water quality.

Flow monitoring equipment: Install an advanced mobile automatic radar wave flow measurement system to achieve online monitoring of river flow. The system can measure the multi-vertical flow velocity distribution across the entire river cross-section, thereby accurately calculating the flow rate. The radar flowmeter calculates the flow rate by measuring the surface flow velocity of water and combining it with water level data. It has the advantages of non-contact measurement, easy installation, maintenance-free in the later stage, and is not afraid of silt and debris.

Video surveillance equipment: High-definition cameras are installed at monitoring sections and key locations to achieve real-time video monitoring of river conditions, facilitating intuitive observation of water flow conditions, the operational status of monitoring equipment, and whether there are abnormal conditions such as floating objects in the river, providing auxiliary references for flow monitoring.

V. System Introduction

The system adopts a non-contact flow measurement method and mainly consists of a radar wave flowmeter, a radar operation vehicle, a system control and flow calculation system, a data remote measurement system (including RTU), a constant current and constant voltage charging control system, an ultrashort wave radio, a water level gauge, a solar power supply system, supporting brackets and central station management software, etc. Two 304 stainless steel wire ropes with a spacing of 300mm and a diameter of ≥5mm are used as guide rails. The radar wave flowmeter, stepper motor, radar speed controller, lithium battery, radio station and other equipment are installed in the radar running car. The radar running car is suspended on the guide rails through the drive wheels and steering wheels. Through the radar speed measurement control system and the operation instructions of the radio station, the radar wave flowmeter is controlled to measure the flow at the designated vertical line, and the measured flow velocity data is sent to the system controller. At the same time, the system controller collects the water level data and then sends the water level, flow velocity and other data to the flow calculation terminal to calculate the section flow in real time, thereby achieving unattended automatic measurement of the section.

This flow measurement system is suitable for scenarios such as natural river channels, mountain rivers, relatively shallow streams, flow measurement during flood seasons, water areas where artificial flow measurement is relatively dangerous, and online monitoring of open channel flow.

Vi. Segmentation of Scenarios

Flood warning and flood control dispatching: By real-time monitoring of river flow and water level, combined with hydrological models and meteorological forecast information, accurately predict the development trend of floods and promptly issue warning signals to relevant departments and the public. At the same time, it provides scientific basis for flood control decisions such as reservoir dispatching and river flood diversion, effectively reducing the losses caused by flood disasters.

Water resources management and allocation: Real-time grasp of river flow information to provide data support for the rational allocation of water resources. During drought periods, water withdrawal plans can be scientifically arranged based on monitoring data to ensure the water demands for residents' daily life and industrial and agricultural production. During periods of abundant water resources, the utilization efficiency of water resources can be optimized to promote the sustainable development of the economy and society.

Hydrological data compilation and analysis: Collect and organize river flow monitoring data, conduct the compilation and analysis of hydrological data, and provide basic data for hydrological law research, water resources assessment, water conservancy project planning and design, etc. Through the analysis of data over many years, we can gain a deep understanding of the changing patterns of river flow and the spatio-temporal distribution characteristics of water resources, providing decision support for the scientific management and protection of water resources.

Comparison and measurement of mobile automatic radar wave flow measurement system with ADCP