Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID 2018LA117B

Development of Low-Cost Online Water Level Monitoring Platform Based on Capacitive Sensing

Institute: Louisiana
Year Established: 2018 Start Date: 2018-03-01 End Date: 2019-02-28
Total Federal Funds: $13,000 Total Non-Federal Funds: $29,316

Principal Investigators: Kidong Park

Abstract: Accurate measurement of water level at underground wells and rivers is essential information to manage water resources efficiently and to develop our strategies to complex water-related problems. However, currently available technology to measure the water level rely heavily on manual operation and technicians have to visit individual sites to measure the water level or to retrieve the measured data, significantly limiting large-area measurement of water levels. To this end, PI proposes to develop an online platform to measure the water level of underground wells or surface waters, using a capacitive sensing technique. The platform will automatically measure the water level and send the measured data over commercial 4G wireless network to the main server on a predetermined interval. The development and production cost of the platform will be minimized to alleviate budgetary burden for large-scale deployment, by using affordable commercial off-the-shelf components. PI will develop the platform and evaluate its operation through field tests for extend period, to test its robustness, accuracy, and battery life.