USING ADVANCED DEEP LEARNING TECHNIQUES TO IDENTIFY DRAINAGE CROSSING FEATURES

Author

Michael Isaiah Edidem, Southern Illinois University CarbondaleFollow

Date of Award

8-1-2024

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Geography and Environmental Resources

First Advisor

Li, Ruopu

Abstract

High-resolution digital elevation models (HRDEMs) enable precise mapping of hydrographic features. However, the absence of drainage crossings underpassing roads or bridges hinders accurate delineation of stream networks. Traditional methods such as on-screen digitization and field surveys for locating these crossings are time-consuming and expensive for extensive areas. This study investigates the effectiveness of deep learning models for automated drainage crossing detection using HRDEMs. The study also explores the performance of advanced classification algorithm such as EfficientNetV2 model using various co-registered HRDRM-derived geomorphological features, such as positive openness, geometric curvature, and topographic position index (TPI) variants, for drainage crossings classification. The results reveal that individual layers, particularly HRDEM and TPI21, achieve the best performance, while combining all five layers doesn't improve accuracy. Hence, effective feature screening is crucial, as eliminating less informative features enhances the F1 score. For drainage crossing detection, this study develops and trains deep learning models, Faster R-CNN and YOLOv5 object detectors, using HRDEM tiles and ground truth labels. These models achieve an average F1-score of 0.78 in Nebraska watershed and demonstrate successful transferability to other watersheds. This spatial object detection approach offers a promising avenue for automated, large-scale drainage crossing detection, facilitating the integration of these features into HRDEMs and improving the accuracy of hydrographic network delineation.