A Novel Approach to Measuring Urban Waterlogging Depth from Images Based on Mask Region-Based Convolutional Neural Network

Abstract

Quickly obtaining accurate waterlogging depth data is vital in urban flood events, especially for emergency response and risk mitigation. In this study, a novel approach to measure urban waterlogging depth was developed using images from social networks and traffic surveillance video systems. The Mask region-based convolutional neural network (Mask R-CNN) model was used to detect tires in waterlogging, which were considered to be reference objects. Then, waterlogging depth was calculated using the height differences method and Pythagorean theorem. The results show that tires detected from images can been used as an effective reference object to calculate waterlogging depth. The Pythagorean theorem method performs better on images from social networks, and the height differences method performs well both on the images from social networks and on traffic surveillance video systems. Overall, the low-cost method proposed in this study can be used to obtain timely waterlogging warning information, and enhance the possibility of using existing social networks and traffic surveillance video systems to perform opportunistic waterlogging sensing.