Recently, at the invitation of the Urban Energy Group, the team from the State Key Laboratory for Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing of Wuhan University has successfully detected and positioned the leakage location in the heat-supply pipeline system of Gavle, Sweden.

The team is formed by lab graduates Lu Yuncheng, Wang Xinyu, Jia Tianyi, Xiang Tianzhu, Xu Yao, Wang Zifeng, Chen Hui, under the direction of Prof. Zhong Yanfei and Prof. Xia Guisong.

This visit to Sweden is a part of the international technology cooperation program among Wuhan University, Geostar and the Gavle government in Sweden. The team used the independently developed UAV and thermal anomaly detection system with visible sensor and thermal infrared sensor, and carried out a one-week on-site test on the leakage location of the urban heat-supply system in Gavle.

This test has witnessed the internationally advanced technologies adopted by this team about geometric correction, target detection and anomaly detection in remote sensing image processing.

Situated in Northern Europe, Gavle has been in face of a freezing and long winter. Therefore, this city enjoys an annually long heat-supply system of wide coverage. However, some pipelines are in the accident frequency time with high leakage risks, because these facilities have served for quite a long time and some pipelines have worked for decades or even more. To make matters worse, the leakage is hard to be detected for the pipelines are buried underneath. The small amount of leaked heat, when accumulated, can lead to a huge waste and even severe danger. Currently, the detection methods are mostly based on manual work of low efficiency.

The team from Wuhan University utilized the visible sensor and thermal infrared sensor, and independently developed an UAV with thermal sensor. This invention can provide the originally authentic visible and infrared image for heat leakage detection. Also, analysis on remote sensing image is provided by using the latest thermal infrared image mosaic technology and thermal anomaly detection technology. Hence, the exact leakage location can be positioned.

This experiment fruit was affirmed by the Urban Energy Group of Gavle and was reported by the local press.

Photo by Yang Xu, edited by Xiao Shan

Written by Shen Yuxi, edited by Hu Sijia