Bunbury Engineering Surveys Remote Monitoring Caustic Lake with Remote Control Boat and Campbell Scientific Technology
Traditional boating survey methods for contaminated lakes required two people to enter the hazardous water in a small vessel placing them at immediate contact risk of contamination through all stages of the surveying process from launching the vessel, splashing from the hull when conducting the survey and physically retrieving the wet vessel. In the event of capsizing the risk of a fatality would be very high.
Bunbury Engineering Surveys (BES) employee Chris Gibbs explains - “Remote controlled survey boat was designed and constructed by BES to eliminate the safety concerns with the traditional surveying method. It is a small remote control boat with onboard survey technology which allows for the safe completion of boating surveys on contaminated and uncontaminated water. This innovation allows us to obtain a complete under water surface profile or contour plan of a containment area, and locate it on a plan with reference to existing survey control. This data then enables volume calculation of product pumped into the containment lake since the last survey.”
“In October 2009, BES was approached by a client with the request to obtain water temperature readings at 150mm below the surface of a 100Ha contaminated lake, whilst completing the normal underwater profile survey. Enlisting the services of David Boadle from Campbell Scientific we were able to fit a CR 800 Data Logger with temperature sensor to the remote controlled boat along with the RF 411 radio to transmit the temperature data in real time back to the shore.”
“This technology has now been added as a permanent feature to our remote controlled survey boat and allows us to easily log surface water temperature as well as water temperature at any pre-given depth and locate the temperature differentials in unison with location data on the laptop.”
“David and the team at Campbell Scientific were instrumental in enabling us to meet our client’s requirements. Their prompt service had this technology delivered to WA within three days of order. David’s after sales service to assist us to install this technology and get it operational in a very short period of time, was over and above what would normally be expected.”
“Bunbury Engineering Surveys and its client were very happy with the results that were achieved.”
Bunbury Engineering Surveys provides safe, accurate, efficient and cost effective surveying service to the mining and construction industry throughout Australia. They are also involved in the development, sale and installation of their remote controlled survey boat technology to the mining industry around the world.
