Introduction
I was assigned
a project from work to construct what would later be known
as a "flood triggered automated camera system",
or FTACS for short. A water flow gauging station was once
installed at Sculpture Cave, Cutta Cutta Caves National Park
(NT, Australia) in 1997 and reinstated in 2001 to continue
monitoring until the removal of the device in early 2008.
During this period, significant inflows into the cave were
recorded – one being a figure of 8000 L/s during the
peak of the wet season. Flow of this magnitude, unlike that
going through a simple fridge
water filter, has significant effects on how water filters
into the surrounding groundwater aquifers. As such, it was
determined to be in the interests of the Department of Natural
Resources (Water Resources) to install an unmanned camera
system that would capture images during flow
periods in order to visually observe the intensity of
such events. Such monitoring
equipment would have to be automatic, as maintaining a
physical presence at the site would prove inherently dangerous,
not to mention time consuming given the rare occurrence of
such flow events. This was to be my project.
Figure 1
Sculpture Cave
(Fig. 1) was visited on the 7th January 2009 in order to survey
the environment and hence determine the feasibility of such
a camera system. The remains of the previous gauging station
(steel observation box, solar panel and 10m cable conduit)
were seen to be important assets that could simplify installation
of the FTACS. A 2m deep crevice (Fig. 2) was discovered close
to the location of the old flow meter, which was later utilized
to house the water sensing probe box.
Figure 2
