A Comparison of Machine Learning Approaches to Improve Free Topography Data for Flood Modelling

Application of Multi-Channel Convolutional Neural Network to Improve DEM Data in Urban Cities

A digital elevation model (DEM) represents the topographic surface of the Earth and is an indispensable source of data in many applications, such as flood modeling, infrastructure design and land management. DEM data at high spatial resolution and high accuracy of elevation data are not only costly and time-consuming to acquire but also often confidential. In this paper, we explore a cost-effective approach to derive good quality DEM data by applying a multi-channel convolutional neural network (CNN) to enhance free resources of available DEM data. Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) data, multi-spectral imaging Sentinel-2, as well as Google satellite imagery were used as inputs to the CNN model. The CNN model was first trained using high-quality reference DEM data in a dense urban city—Nice, France—then validated on another site in Nice and finally tested in the Orchard Road area (Singapore), which is also an equally dense urban area in Singapore. The CNN model not only shows an impressive reduction in the root mean square error (RMSE) of 50% at validation site in Nice and 30% at the test site in Singapore, but also results in much clearer profiles of the land surface than input SRTM data. A comparison between CNN performance and that of an earlier conducted study using artificial neural networks (ANN) was conducted as well. The comparison within this limited study shows that CNN yields a more accurate DEM.

Satellite DEM Improvement Using Multispectral Imagery and an Artificial Neural Network

The digital elevation model (DEM) is crucial for various applications, such as land management and flood planning, as it reflects the actual topographic characteristic on the Earth’s surface. However, it is quite a challenge to acquire the high-quality DEM, as it is very time-consuming, costly, and often confidential. This paper explores a DEM improvement scheme using an artificial neural network (ANN) that could improve the German Aerospace’s TanDEM-X (12 m resolution). The ANN was first trained in Nice, France, with a high spatial resolution surveyed DEM (1 m) and then applied on a faraway city, Singapore, for validation. In the ANN training, Sentinel-2 and TanDEM-X data of the Nice area were used as the input data, while the ground truth observation data of Nice were used as the target data. The applicability of iTanDEM-X was finally conducted at a different site in Singapore. The trained iTanDEM-X shows a significant reduction in the root mean square error of 43.6% in Singapore. It was also found that the improvement for different land covers (e.g., vegetation and built-up areas) ranges from 20 to 65%. The paper also demonstrated the application of the trained ANN on Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where the ground truth data are not available; for cases such as this, a visual comparison with Google satellite imagery was then utilized. The DEM from iTanDEM-X with 10 m resolution categorically shows much clearer land shapes (particularly the roads and buildings).

Natural Disasters Intensity Analysis and Classification Based on Multispectral Images Using Multi-Layered Deep Convolutional Neural Network

Natural disasters not only disturb the human ecological system but also destroy the properties and critical infrastructures of human societies and even lead to permanent change in the ecosystem. Disaster can be caused by naturally occurring events such as earthquakes, cyclones, floods, and wildfires. Many deep learning techniques have been applied by various researchers to detect and classify natural disasters to overcome losses in ecosystems, but detection of natural disasters still faces issues due to the complex and imbalanced structures of images. To tackle this problem, we propose a multilayered deep convolutional neural network. The proposed model works in two blocks: Block-I convolutional neural network (B-I CNN), for detection and occurrence of disasters, and Block-II convolutional neural network (B-II CNN), for classification of natural disaster intensity types with different filters and parameters. The model is tested on 4428 natural images and performance is calculated and expressed as different statistical values: sensitivity (SE), 97.54%; specificity (SP), 98.22%; accuracy rate (AR), 99.92%; precision (PRE), 97.79%; and F1-score (F1), 97.97%. The overall accuracy for the whole model is 99.92%, which is competitive and comparable with state-of-the-art algorithms.