UAV Based Spatiotemporal Analysis of the 2019–2020 New South Wales Bushfires

Drone Deployment Algorithms for Effective Communication Establishment in Disaster Affected Areas

Communication establishment is crucial for rescue operations in disaster affected areas. A standard tool for communication is the use of cell phones. However, they can be useless in situations where the cellular network’s base stations are damaged in a disaster. A contemporary approach to re-establishing a communication network is by hosting base stations in drones. However, low battery life and difficulty in calculating the number of drones needed in different terrains are limitations of the above approach. This paper introduces a novel terrain-aware algorithm that calculates the minimum number of drones needed to cover an area with no voids in the network coverage. Our method ensures that the drones are deployed at optimal heights to maximize the average leftover energy in the network. We apply the algorithm for an actual location in Pettimudi, India and find the optimal number and positions of the drones to cover the area effectively without voids. In addition, we provide a simulation of the the communication establishment using above drones, and our experiments yield an average network efficiency of 98%, showing the effectiveness of our method.

System-Level Performance Analysis of Cooperative Multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Wildfire Surveillance Using Agent-Based Modeling

In this paper, we propose an agent-based approach for the evaluation of Multiple Unmanned Autonomous Vehicle (MUAV) wildfire monitoring systems for remote and hard-to-reach areas. Emerging environmental factors are causing a higher number of wildfires and keeping these fires in check is becoming a global challenge. MUAV deployment for the monitoring and surveillance of potential fires has already been established. However, most of the scholarly work is still focused on MUAV operations details. In wildfire surveillance and monitoring, evaluations of the system-level performance in terms of the analysis of the effects of individual behavior on system surveillance has yet to be established. Especially in an MUAV system, the individual and cooperative behaviors of the team affect the overall performance of the system. Such systems are dynamic and stochastic because of an ever-changing environment. Quantifying the emergent system behavior and general performance measures of such a system by analytical methods is challenging. In our work, we present an agent-based model for MUAV surveillance missions. This paper focuses on the overall system performance of cooperative UAVs performing forest fire surveillance. The principal theme is to present the effects of three behaviors on overall performance: (1) the area allocation and (2) dynamic coverage, and (3) the effects of forest density on team allocation. For area allocation, three behaviors are simulated: (1) randomized, (2) two-layer barrier sweep coverage, and (3) full sweep coverage. For dynamic coverage, the effects of communication and resource unavailability during the mission are studied by analyzing the agent’s downtime spent on refueling. Last, an extensive simulation is carried out on wildfire models with varying forest density. It is found that cooperative complete sweep coverage strategies perform better than the rest and the performance of the team is greatly affected by the forest density.

Automatic Target Detection from Satellite Imagery Using Machine Learning

Object detection is a vital step in satellite imagery-based computer vision applications such as precision agriculture, urban planning and defense applications. In satellite imagery, object detection is a very complicated task due to various reasons including low pixel resolution of objects and detection of small objects in the large scale (a single satellite image taken by Digital Globe comprises over 240 million pixels) satellite images. Object detection in satellite images has many challenges such as class variations, multiple objects pose, high variance in object size, illumination and a dense background. This study aims to compare the performance of existing deep learning algorithms for object detection in satellite imagery. We created the dataset of satellite imagery to perform object detection using convolutional neural network-based frameworks such as faster RCNN (faster region-based convolutional neural network), YOLO (you only look once), SSD (single-shot detector) and SIMRDWN (satellite imagery multiscale rapid detection with windowed networks). In addition to that, we also performed an analysis of these approaches in terms of accuracy and speed using the developed dataset of satellite imagery. The results showed that SIMRDWN has an accuracy of 97% on high-resolution images, while Faster RCNN has an accuracy of 95.31% on the standard resolution (1000 × 600). YOLOv3 has an accuracy of 94.20% on standard resolution (416 × 416) while on the other hand SSD has an accuracy of 84.61% on standard resolution (300 × 300). When it comes to speed and efficiency, YOLO is the obvious leader. In real-time surveillance, SIMRDWN fails. When YOLO takes 170 to 190 milliseconds to perform a task, SIMRDWN takes 5 to 103 milliseconds.

Using Adaptive Sensors for Optimised Target Coverage in Wireless Sensor Networks

Innovation in wireless communications and microtechnology has progressed day by day, and this has resulted in the creation of wireless sensor networks. This technology is utilised in a variety of settings, including battlefield surveillance, home security, and healthcare monitoring, among others. However, since tiny batteries with very little power are used, this technology has power and target monitoring issues. With the development of various architectures and algorithms, considerable research has been done to address these problems. The adaptive learning automata algorithm (ALAA) is a scheduling machine learning method that is utilised in this study. It offers a time-saving scheduling method. As a result, each sensor node in the network has been outfitted with learning automata, allowing them to choose their appropriate state at any given moment. The sensor is in one of two states: active or sleep. Several experiments were conducted to get the findings of the suggested method. Different parameters are utilised in this experiment to verify the consistency of the method for scheduling the sensor node so that it can cover all of the targets while using less power. The experimental findings indicate that the proposed method is an effective approach to schedule sensor nodes to monitor all targets while using less electricity. Finally, we have benchmarked our technique against the LADSC scheduling algorithm. All of the experimental data collected thus far demonstrate that the suggested method has justified the problem description and achieved the project’s aim. Thus, while constructing an actual sensor network, our suggested algorithm may be utilised as a useful technique for scheduling sensor nodes.

Detecting Natural Hazard-Related Disaster Impacts with Social Media Analytics: The Case of Australian States and Territories

Natural hazard-related disasters are disruptive events with significant impact on people, communities, buildings, infrastructure, animals, agriculture, and environmental assets. The exponentially increasing anthropogenic activities on the planet have aggregated the climate change and consequently increased the frequency and severity of these natural hazard-related disasters, and consequential damages in cities. The digital technological advancements, such as monitoring systems based on fusion of sensors and machine learning, in early detection, warning and disaster response systems are being implemented as part of the disaster management practice in many countries and presented useful results. Along with these promising technologies, crowdsourced social media disaster big data analytics has also started to be utilized. This study aims to form an understanding of how social media analytics can be utilized to assist government authorities in estimating the damages linked to natural hazard-related disaster impacts on urban centers in the age of climate change. To this end, this study analyzes crowdsourced disaster big data from Twitter users in the testbed case study of Australian states and territories. The methodological approach of this study employs the social media analytics method and conducts sentiment and content analyses of location-based Twitter messages (n = 131,673) from Australia. The study informs authorities on an innovative way to analyze the geographic distribution, occurrence frequency of various disasters and their damages based on the geo-tweets analysis.

Inspecting Buildings Using Drones and Computer Vision: A Machine Learning Approach to Detect Cracks and Damages

Manual inspection of infrastructure damages such as building cracks is difficult due to the objectivity and reliability of assessment and high demands of time and costs. This can be automated using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for aerial imagery of damages. Numerous computer vision-based approaches have been applied to address the limitations of crack detection but they have their limitations that can be overcome by using various hybrid approaches based on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) techniques. The convolutional neural networks (CNNs), an application of the deep learning (DL) method, display remarkable potential for automatically detecting image features such as damages and are less sensitive to image noise. A modified deep hierarchical CNN architecture has been used in this study for crack detection and damage assessment in civil infrastructures. The proposed architecture is based on 16 convolution layers and a cycle generative adversarial network (CycleGAN). For this study, the crack images were collected using UAVs and open-source images of mid to high rise buildings (five stories and above) constructed during 2000 in Sydney, Australia. Conventionally, a CNN network only utilizes the last layer of convolution. However, our proposed network is based on the utility of multiple layers. Another important component of the proposed CNN architecture is the application of guided filtering (GF) and conditional random fields (CRFs) to refine the predicted outputs to get reliable results. Benchmarking data (600 images) of Sydney-based buildings damages was used to test the proposed architecture. The proposed deep hierarchical CNN architecture produced superior performance when evaluated using five methods: GF method, Baseline (BN) method, Deep-Crack BN, Deep-Crack GF, and SegNet. Overall, the GF method outperformed all other methods as indicated by the global accuracy (0.990), class average accuracy (0.939), mean intersection of the union overall classes (IoU) (0.879), precision (0.838), recall (0.879), and F-score (0.8581) values. Overall, the proposed CNN architecture provides the advantages of reduced noise, highly integrated supervision of features, adequate learning, and aggregation of both multi-scale and multilevel features during the training procedure along with the refinement of the overall output predictions.

Cloud- and Fog-Integrated Smart Grid Model for Efficient Resource Utilisation

The smart grid (SG) is a contemporary electrical network that enhances the network's performance, reliability, stability, and energy efficiency. The integration of cloud and fog computing with SG can increase its efficiency. The combination of SG with cloud computing enhances resource allocation. To minimise the burden on the Cloud and optimise resource allocation, the concept of fog computing integration with cloud computing is presented. Fog has three essential functionalities: location awareness, low latency, and mobility. We offer a cloud and fog-based architecture for information management in this study. By allocating virtual machines using a load-balancing mechanism, fog computing makes the system more efficient (VMs). We proposed a novel approach based on binary particle swarm optimisation with inertia weight adjusted using simulated annealing. The technique is named BPSOSA. Inertia weight is an important factor in BPSOSA which adjusts the size of the search space for finding the optimal solution. The BPSOSA technique is compared against the round robin, odds algorithm, and ant colony optimisation. In terms of response time, BPSOSA outperforms round robin, odds algorithm, and ant colony optimisation by 53.99 ms, 82.08 ms, and 81.58 ms, respectively. In terms of processing time, BPSOSA outperforms round robin, odds algorithm, and ant colony optimisation by 52.94 ms, 81.20 ms, and 80.56 ms, respectively. Compared to BPSOSA, ant colony optimisation has slightly better cost efficiency, however, the difference is insignificant.

Promoting Customer Loyalty and Satisfaction in Financial Institutions through Technology Integration: The Roles of Service Quality, Awareness, and Perceptions

This study examines the effects of quality of service, product awareness, and perceptions among customers of Islamic financial institutions (IFIs) on customer loyalty through technology integration using customer satisfaction as a mediator. A well-structured, comprehensive questionnaire was developed and data were collected from 203 respondents who were customers of six IFIs in Pakistan and had at least 2 years of experience in dealing confiorm this is correct with these IFIs. A total of 171 accurate responses were received from the respondents. Ten hypotheses were developed and statistically verified using regression and correlation analytical techniques. The results reveal that the quality of customer services and awareness of IFIs had a direct and positive relationship with customer loyalty, which in turn was mediated by customer satisfaction. Perceptions about IFIs had a direct positive relation with customer satisfaction. However, the relation of perceptions and quality of service with customer loyalty and satisfaction in financial institutions through technology integration was found to be insignificant, even in the presence of customer satisfaction as a mediator.

Assessing Nitrate Contamination Risks in Groundwater: A Machine Learning Approach

Groundwater is one of the primary sources for the daily water requirements of the masses, but it is subjected to contamination due to the pollutants, such as nitrate, percolating through the soil with water. Especially in built-up areas, groundwater vulnerability and contamination are of major concern, and require appropriate consideration. The present study develops a novel framework for assessing groundwater nitrate contamination risk for the area along the Karakoram Highway, which is a part of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) route in northern Pakistan. A groundwater vulnerability map was prepared using the DRASTIC model. The nitrate concentration data from a previous study were used to formulate the nitrate contamination map. Three machine learning (ML) models, i.e., Support Vector Machine (SVM), Multivariate Discriminant Analysis (MDA), and Boosted Regression Trees (BRT), were used to analyze the probability of groundwater contamination incidence. Furthermore, groundwater contamination probability maps were obtained utilizing the ensemble modeling approach. The models were calibrated and validated through calibration trials, using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve method (AUC), where a minimum AUC threshold value of 80% was achieved. Results indicated the accuracy of the models to be in the range of 0.82–0.87. The final groundwater contamination risk map highlights that 34% of the area is moderately vulnerable to groundwater contamination, and 13% of the area is exposed to high groundwater contamination risk. The findings of this study can facilitate decision-making regarding the location of future built-up areas properly in order to mitigate the nitrate contamination that can further reduce the associated health risks.