Drones applications for smart cities: Monitoring palm trees and street lights

Abstract

This study explores drones' applications and proposes a cost-effective drone monitoring system for both palm trees and street lighting networks. The planned drone technical system has two monitoring sections. First, a model is developed to examine the health of date palm trees, in which drone photos are used to determine whether palm trees are suffering from diseases such as black scorch and sudden decline syndrome. These images are transferred into a central computer to stimulate normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) models using AgiSoft software. The simulated NDVI models indicated that there are no health issues with date palm trees, which has resulted in the positive feedback in terms of the economic growth. Second, drone technology is utilized to detect the technical faults in the lighting network to ensure proper maintenance and social security. Twelve images of street lights are captured to demonstrate the working condition and the operational status of the street lights. These images are processed in MATLAB software, and a stimulated image processing model is implemented to enhance the monitoring of the street lighting network. The simulation findings indicate that the light in one of the images is not functioning, and ArcGIS Pro is utilized to locate it.