Enhancing geotechnical damage detection with deep learning: a convolutional neural network approach

Most natural disasters result from geodynamic events such as landslides and slope collapse. These failures cause catastrophes that directly impact the environment and cause financial and human losses. Visual inspection is the primary method for detecting failures in geotechnical structures, but on-site visits can be risky due to unstable soil. In addition, the body design and hostile and remote installation conditions make monitoring these structures inviable. When a fast and secure evaluation is required, analysis by computational methods becomes feasible. In this study, a convolutional neural network (CNN) approach to computer vision is applied to identify defects in the surface of geotechnical structures aided by unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and mobile devices, aiming to reduce the reliance on human-led on-site inspections. However, studies in computer vision algorithms still need to be explored in this field due to particularities of geotechnical engineering, such as limited public datasets and redundant images. Thus, this study obtained images of surface failure indicators from slopes near a Brazilian national road, assisted by UAV and mobile devices. We then proposed a custom CNN and low complexity model architecture to build a binary classifier image-aided to detect faults in geotechnical surfaces. The model achieved a satisfactory average accuracy rate of 94.26%. An AUC metric score of 0.99 from the receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curve and matrix confusion with a testing dataset show satisfactory results. The results suggest that the capability of the model to distinguish between the classes 'damage' and 'intact' is excellent. It enables the identification of failure indicators. Early failure indicator detection on the surface of slopes can facilitate proper maintenance and alarms and prevent disasters, as the integrity of the soil directly affects the structures built around and above it.