Date of Award

Spring 5-2019

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.S.

Degree Program

Computer Science

Department

Computer Science

Major Professor

Dr. Md Tamjidul Hoque

Second Advisor

Dr. Shaikh M. Arifuzzaman

Third Advisor

Dr. Minhaz F. Zibran

Fourth Advisor

Dr. Mahdi Abdelguerfi

Abstract

Levees provide protection for vast amounts of commercial and residential properties. However, these structures degrade over time, due to the impact of severe weather, sand boils, subsidence of land, seepage, etc. In this research, we focus on detecting sand boils. Sand boils occur when water under pressure wells up to the surface through a bed of sand. These make levees especially vulnerable. Object detection is a good approach to confirm the presence of sand boils from satellite or drone imagery, which can be utilized to assist in the automated levee monitoring methodology. Since sand boils have distinct features, applying object detection algorithms to it can result in accurate detection. To the best of our knowledge, this research work is the first approach to detect sand boils from images. In this research, we compare some of the latest deep learning methods, Viola Jones algorithm, and other non-deep learning methods to determine the best performing one. We also train a Stacking-based machine learning method for the accurate prediction of sand boils. The accuracy of our robust model is 95.4%.

Rights

The University of New Orleans and its agents retain the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible this dissertation or thesis in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The author retains all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation.

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