A genetic algorithm based approach to estimate the volume of a drinking water reservoir in Chennai city, South India, using multi-spectral satellite images

This paper is concerned with the use of satellite image processing and remote sensing approaches to determine the water-spread area and capacity of a drinking water reservoir in Poondi, near Chennai City, south India. Estimation of water-spread area and volume of the reservoirs using traditional methods like field surveys, acoustic surveys and hydrographic surveys is time-consuming, laborious and expensive. To overcome these problems, many researchers have used satellite images and the per-pixel (hard classification), the sub-pixel (soft classification) and the super resolution mapping approaches. The conventional hard and soft classification approaches do not give accurate results due to the presence of mixed pixels in the image scene of the periphery of the reservoir. In this work, a per-pixel algorithm (Maximum Likelihood), a sub-pixel algorithm (Fuzzy C Means) and a super resolution mapping algorithm (Genetic algorithm) are developed and the water-spread area is estimated for the reservoir using multi-date Landsat8 OLI images. The volume of the reservoir at different water levels are estimated using the water-spread area and the Trapezoidal formula. The capacity estimated from satellite image-derived area is compared with the capacity data obtained from the Poondi reservoir authority. The error in estimation due to the per-pixel approach is 16.74%, while it is 9.06% for the sub-pixel approach and a mere 3.25% for the super-resolution approach. Thus, the super-resolution mapping approach results in minimum error when compared to the sub-pixel approach which in turn gives lesser error result when comparing with the per-pixel approach.

Automated summary

This study utilizes satellite image processing and remote sensing methods to estimate the water-spread area and capacity of a drinking water reservoir in Poondi, south India, demonstrating different algorithms and comparing error rates.