Change Detection over mining areas using Deep Neural Networks from Planetscope image time series

The processes of change detection (CD) in land use and land cover through satellite images acquired in different temporal phases represent a key process to monitor the land, the environment and evaluate disasters. Currently the methodologies used for CD based on pixels do not allow processing a large amount of images massively, so it is not possible to analyze all the available information. Main aim of this research is to evaluate the performance of Deep learning methods for CD, grouped in two approaches, across open mining areas from PlanetScope (PS) image time series of the Cerrejon mine in Colombia. Two approaches for change generation are proposed, one based on post-classification comparison in which two convolutional neural network (CNN) architectures are evaluated: U-Net and Feature Pyramidal Network (FPN) for the classification of mining areas along the time series, for this purpose different models with different hyperparameters were generated and trained to select the most suitable for such process and subsequently perform the difference between the periods of the series; and a second approach based on direct change detection in which a modified U-Net network was evaluated from pairs of images. For this purpose, different models were also trained selecting the most appropriate for the detection of changes for each period of the time series, obtaining a map of changes for each approach, each one the results were validated; the most appropriate approach was number 2 (Direct change detection), with kappa accuracies greater than 0.9 in each period of the time series.