Water license compliance monitoring from space
In New South Wales, monitoring whether water licence holders use river and groundwater in accordance with their licence is a major challenge. Distances are vast, and extraction is often directly from river floodplains during floods, which makes it very hard to keep an eye on compliance.
Together with New South Wales Government, we are developing a satellite-based system to monitor irrigation water use and water extraction. The proposed system will provide guidance to assist compliance officers in targeting properties for inspection, by determining the likelihood that the amount of irrigation on individual properties estimated from satellite observations exceeds extraction limits.