• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.327-341
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• 2022

Cloud removal is often required to construct time-series sets of optical images for environmental monitoring. In regression-based cloud removal, the selection of an appropriate regression model and the impact analysis of the input images significantly affect the prediction performance. This study evaluates the potential of Gaussian process (GP) regression for cloud removal and also analyzes the effects of cloud-free optical images and spectral bands on prediction performance. Unlike other machine learning-based regression models, GP regression provides uncertainty information and automatically optimizes hyperparameters. An experiment using Sentinel-2 multi-spectral images was conducted for cloud removal in the two agricultural regions. The prediction performance of GP regression was compared with that of random forest (RF) regression. Various combinations of input images and multi-spectral bands were considered for quantitative evaluations. The experimental results showed that using multi-temporal images with multi-spectral bands as inputs achieved the best prediction accuracy. Highly correlated adjacent multi-spectral bands and temporally correlated multi-temporal images resulted in an improved prediction accuracy. The prediction performance of GP regression was significantly improved in predicting the near-infrared band compared to that of RF regression. Estimating the distribution function of input data in GP regression could reflect the variations in the considered spectral band with a broader range. In particular, GP regression was superior to RF regression for reproducing structural patterns at both sites in terms of structural similarity. In addition, uncertainty information provided by GP regression showed a reasonable similarity to prediction errors for some sub-areas, indicating that uncertainty estimates may be used to measure the prediction result quality. These findings suggest that GP regression could be beneficial for cloud removal and optical image reconstruction. In addition, the impact analysis results of the input images provide guidelines for selecting optimal images for regression-based cloud removal.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.38 no.6_1
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• pp.1357-1369
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• 2022

Cloud removal is an essential image processing step for any task requiring time-series optical images, such as vegetation monitoring and change detection. This paper presents a two-stage cloud removal method that combines conditional generative adversarial networks (cGANs) with regression-based calibration to construct a cloud-free time-series optical image set. In the first stage, the cGANs generate initial prediction results using quantitative relationships between optical and synthetic aperture radar images. In the second stage, the relationships between the predicted results and the actual values in non-cloud areas are first quantified via random forest-based regression modeling and then used to calibrate the cGAN-based prediction results. The potential of the proposed method was evaluated from a cloud removal experiment using Sentinel-2 and COSMO-SkyMed images in the rice field cultivation area of Gimje. The cGAN model could effectively predict the reflectance values in the cloud-contaminated rice fields where severe changes in physical surface conditions happened. Moreover, the regression-based calibration in the second stage could improve the prediction accuracy, compared with a regression-based cloud removal method using a supplementary image that is temporally distant from the target image. These experimental results indicate that the proposed method can be effectively applied to restore cloud-contaminated areas when cloud-free optical images are unavailable for environmental monitoring.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.39 no.5_1
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• pp.507-519
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• 2023

Multi-temporal optical images have been utilized for time-series monitoring of croplands. However, the presence of clouds imposes limitations on image availability, often requiring a cloud removal procedure. This study assesses the applicability of various machine learning algorithms for effective cloud removal in optical imagery. We conducted comparative experiments by focusing on two key variables that significantly influence the predictive performance of machine learning algorithms: (1) land-cover types of training data and (2) temporal variability of land-cover types. Three machine learning algorithms, including Gaussian process regression (GPR), support vector machine (SVM), and random forest (RF), were employed for the experiments using simulated cloudy images in paddy fields of Gunsan. GPR and SVM exhibited superior prediction accuracy when the training data had the same land-cover types as the cloud region, and GPR showed the best stability with respect to sampling fluctuations. In addition, RF was the least affected by the land-cover types and temporal variations of training data. These results indicate that GPR is recommended when the land-cover type and spectral characteristics of the training data are the same as those of the cloud region. On the other hand, RF should be applied when it is difficult to obtain training data with the same land-cover types as the cloud region. Therefore, the land-cover types in cloud areas should be taken into account for extracting informative training data along with selecting the optimal machine learning algorithm.

• Journal of KIBIM
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.32-39
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• 2020

In recent years, the construction industry is getting bigger and more complex, so it is becoming difficult to acquire point cloud data for construction equipments and workers. Point cloud data is measured using a drone and MMS(Mobile Mapping System), and the collected point cloud data is used to create a 3D digital map. In particular, the construction site is located at outdoors and there are many irregular terrains, making it difficult to collect point cloud data. For these reasons, adopting a noise reduction algorithm suitable for the characteristics of the construction industry can affect the improvement of the analysis accuracy of digital maps. This is related to various environments and variables of the construction site. Therefore, this study reviewed and analyzed the existing research and techniques on the noise reduction algorithm. And based on the results of literature review, performance evaluation of major noise reduction algorithms was conducted for digital maps of construction sites. As a result of the performance evaluation in this study, the voxel grid algorithm showed relatively less execution time than the statistical outlier removal algorithm. In addition, analysis results in slope, space, and earth walls of the construction site digital map showed that the voxel grid algorithm was relatively superior to the statistical outlier removal algorithm and that the noise removal performance of voxel grid algorithm was superior and the object preservation ability was also superior. In the future, based on the results reviewed through the performance evaluation of the noise reduction algorithm of this study, we will develop a noise reduction algorithm for 3D point cloud data that reflects the characteristics of the construction site.

• Atmosphere
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.195-205
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• 2007

The influences of ice microphysical processes on urban heat island-induced convection and precipitation are numerically investigated using a cloud-resolving model (ARPS). Both warm- and cold-cloud simulations show that the downwind upward motion forced by specified low-level heating, which is regarded as representing an urban heat island, initiates moist convection and results in downwind precipitation. The surface precipitation in the cold-cloud simulation is produced earlier than that in the warm-cloud simulation. The maximum updraft is stronger in the cold-cloud simulation than in the warm-cloud simulation due to the latent heat release by freezing and deposition. The outflow formed in the boundary layer is cooler and propagates faster in the cold-cloud simulation due mainly to the additional cooling by the melting of falling hail particles. The removal of the specified low-level heating after the onset of surface precipitation results in cooler and faster propagating outflow in both the warm- and cold-cloud simulations.

• Proceedings of the Korea Air Pollution Research Association Conference
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• 2006.10a
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• pp.47-50
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• 2006

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.24 no.E1
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• pp.44-53
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• 2008

This study was undertaken to measure the properties of individual mineral particles in an artificially saturated atmosphere at a vertical extinct mine with 430 m height. By synchrotron radiation X-ray fluorescence (SR-XRF) microprobe analysis, it was possible to determine the elemental composition of residual insoluble particles on individual cloud droplet replicas formed on the Collodion film. The XRF visualized elemental maps enabled us not only to presume the chemical mixing state of particles retained in cloud droplet, but also to estimate their source. Details about the individual mineral particles captured by artificial cloud droplets should be helpful to understand about the removal characteristics of dust particles such as interaction with clouds. Nearly all individual particles captured in cloud droplets are strongly enriched in Fe. Mass of Fe is ranged between 41 fg and 360 fg with average 112 fg. There is a good agreement between single particle analysis by SR-XRF and bulk particle analysis by PIXE.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.37 no.5_1
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• pp.1149-1161
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• 2021

With a trend of the utilization of computer vision for satellite images, cloud detection using deep learning also attracts attention recently. In this study, we conducted a U-Net cloud detection modeling using SPARCS (Spatial Procedures for Automated Removal of Cloud and Shadow) Cloud Dataset with the image data augmentation and carried out 10-fold cross-validation for an objective assessment of the model. Asthe result of the blind test for 1800 datasets with 512 by 512 pixels, relatively high performance with the accuracy of 0.821, the precision of 0.847, the recall of 0.821, the F1-score of 0.831, and the IoU (Intersection over Union) of 0.723. Although 14.5% of actual cloud shadows were misclassified as land, and 19.7% of actual clouds were misidentified as land, this can be overcome by increasing the quality and quantity of label datasets. Moreover, a state-of-the-art DeepLab V3+ model and the NAS (Neural Architecture Search) optimization technique can help the cloud detection for CAS500 (Compact Advanced Satellite 500) in South Korea.

• International Journal of Fuzzy Logic and Intelligent Systems
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.67-72
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• 2013

Cloud detection and analysis from satellite images has been a topic of research in many atmospheric and environmental studies; however, it still is a challenging task for many reasons. In this paper, we propose a new method for cloud-type classification using fuzzy logic. Knowing that visible-light images of clouds contain thickness related information, while infrared images haves height-related information, we propose a two-layered fuzzy logic based on the input source to provide us with a relatively clear-cut threshold in classification. Traditional noise-removal methods that use reflection/release characteristics of infrared images often produce false positive cloud areas, such as fog thereby it negatively affecting the classification accuracy. In this study, we used the color information from source images to extract the region of interest while avoiding false positives. The structure of fuzzy inference was also changed, because we utilized three types of source images: visible-light, infrared, and near-infrared images. When a cloud appears in both the visible-light image and the infrared image, the fuzzy membership function has a different form. Therefore we designed two sets of fuzzy inference rules and related classification rules. In our experiment, the proposed method was verified to be efficient and more accurate than the previous fuzzy logic attempt that used infrared image features.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
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• 2020.06a
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• pp.40-41
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• 2020

As the capacity of the 3d scanner developed, the reverse engineering using the 3d scanner is emphasized in the construction industry to obtain the 3d geometric representation of buildings. However, big size of the indoor point cloud data acquired by the 3d scanner restricts the efficient process in the reverse engineering. In order to solve this inefficiency, several pre-processing methods simplifying and denoising the raw point cloud data by the rough standard are developed, but these non-standard methods can cause the inaccurate recognition and removal the key-points. This paper analyzes the correlation between the accuracy of wall recognition and the density of the data, thus proposes the proper method for the raw point cloud data. The result of this study could improve the efficiency of the data processing phase in the reverse engineering for indoor point cloud data.