Abstract

Pipelines are buried in urban area, and the position (depth and orientation) of buried pipeline should be clearly identified before ground excavation. Although various geophysical methods can be used to detect the buried pipeline, it is not easy to identify the exact information of pipeline due to heterogeneous ground condition. Among various non-destructive geo-exploration methods, ground penetration radar (GPR) can explore the ground subsurface rapidly with relatively low cost compared to other exploration methods. However, the exploration data obtained from GPR requires considerable experiences because interpretation is not intuitive. Recently, researches on automated detection technology for GPR data using deep learning have been conducted. However, the lack of GPR data which is essential for training makes it difficult to build up the reliable detection model. To overcome this problem, we conducted a preliminary study to improve the performance of the detection model using finite difference time domain (FDTD)-based numerical analysis. Firstly, numerical analysis was performed with homogeneous soil media having single permittivity. In case of heterogeneous ground, numerical analysis was performed considering the ground heterogeneity using fractal technique. Secondly, deep learning was carried out using convolutional neural network. Detection Model-A is trained with data set obtained from homogeneous ground. And, detection Model-B is trained with data set obtained from homogeneous ground and heterogeneous ground. As a result, it is found that the detection Model-B which is trained including heterogeneous ground shows better performance than detection Model-A. It indicates the ground heterogeneity should be considered to increase the performance of automated detection model for GPR exploration.