VEPL Dataset: A Vegetation Encroachment in Power Line Corridors Dataset for Semantic Segmentation of Drone Aerial Orthomosaics

Abstract

Vegetation encroachment in power line corridors has multiple problems for modern energy-dependent societies. Failures due to the contact between power lines and vegetation can result in power outages and millions of dollars in losses. To address this problem, UAVs have emerged as a promising solution due to their ability to quickly and affordably monitor long corridors through autonomous flights or being remotely piloted. However, the extensive and manual task that requires analyzing every image acquired by the UAVs when searching for the existence of vegetation encroachment has led many authors to propose the use of Deep Learning to automate the detection process. Despite the advantages of using a combination of UAV imagery and Deep Learning, there is currently a lack of datasets that help to train Deep Learning models for this specific problem. This paper presents a dataset for the semantic segmentation of vegetation encroachment in power line corridors. RGB orthomosaics were obtained for a rural road area using a commercial UAV. The dataset is composed of pairs of tessellated RGB images, coming from the orthomosaic and corresponding multi-color masks representing three different classes: vegetation, power lines, and the background. A detailed description of the image acquisition process is provided, as well as the labeling task and the data augmentation techniques, among other relevant details to produce the dataset. Researchers would benefit from using the proposed dataset by developing and improving strategies for vegetation encroachment monitoring using UAVs and Deep Learning.