Abstract

High-resolution monitoring of rivers becomes important because more frequent and severe flooding and drought events are expected in the future, caused by climate change. Some key hydrometric variables (water surface elevation, bathymetry, and water surface velocity) can be acquired at high spatial resolution and in a contactless and noninvasive way using Unoccupied Aerial Systems (UAS). This paper presents a large publicly available UAS hydrometric dataset surveyed within a 10 km stretch of Rönne Å in Sweden from 28 August to 1 September 2023. The data were acquired using UAS radar altimetry for water surface elevation mapping, UAS water penetrating radar and UAS sonar for bathymetric mapping, and UAS Doppler radar for surface velocity monitoring. All data are divided into three processing levels: the raw data (Level 1), processed point data (Level 2), and point data referenced to a reference river centerline/reference cross section line (Level 3). In-situ ground truth and legacy UAS hydrometry payload data are included for comparison and validation. Good consistency indicates that the new UAS hydrometry payloads provide satisfactory datasets.