Case Study: New South Wales Department of Planning and Environment improves water volume monitoring with Planet

Estimating Volume Changes for Floodplain Harvesting in New South Wales, Australia

The New South Wales Department of Planning and Environment needed to monitor water usage and volume in thousands of private on-farm storages to ensure regulatory compliance and equitable resource sharing. Their challenge was obtaining satellite imagery with sufficient daily cadence and high resolution to accurately detect water movements, which their previous providers could not offer. This led them to partner with Planet to utilize its satellite imagery service.

By implementing Planet's platform, the department gained access to daily, high-resolution three-meter imagery and a vast historical archive. This allowed for precise monitoring of storage filling and drawdown, integration with LiDAR data for volume estimation, and near-real-time insights. The measurable results included a more cost-effective analysis model, with Planet data being used to assess 250 specific storages during a major event, significantly reducing uncertainty in their water volume estimates compared to other methods like Sentinel.

New South Wales Department of Planning and Environment

Mustak Shaikh

Principal for Remote Sensing