YOLOv5-based Chimney Detection Using High Resolution Remote Sensing Images

Air pollution is social issue that has long-term and short-term harmful effect on the health of animals, plants, and environments. Chimneys are the primary source of air pollutants that pollute the atmosphere, so their location and type must be detected and monitored. Power plants and industrial complexes where chimneys emit air pollutants, are much less accessible and have a large site, making direct monitoring cost-inefficient and time-inefficient. As a result, research on detecting chimneys using remote sensing data has recently been conducted. In this study, YOLOv5-based chimney detection model was generated using BUAA-FFPP60 open dataset create for power plants in Hebei Province, Tianjin, and Beijing, China. To improve the detection model’s performance, data split and data augmentation techniques were used, and a training strategy was developed for optimal model generation. The model’s performance was confirmed using various indicators such as precision and recall, and the model’s performance was finally evaluated by comparing it to existing studies using the same dataset.