Quantifying Plastic Bottle Debris in Waterways Using Image Processing

摘要

Waterway debris can impact many aspects of marine environments including marine navigation and recreational fishing in bodies of water. Waterway plastic debris pollution is occurring at such a large scale globally that it is onerous to track and quantify the sheer quantity of misplaced plastics. Digital image processing is one effective way to monitor waterway debris, but the associated complex processes have inherent challenges. The variety of debris size and shape renders all plastics detection impractical without expert review. In this project, image processing algorithms are utilized to detect debris pieces, and estimate the total weight and volume of all plastic bottles in a scene based on known weight and volume of plastic water bottles. The typical weight and volume of plastic water bottles has been used as a reference to estimate the total weight and volume of plastic bottle debris as quantitative measures in digital waterway debris images. The results of estimated plastic bottle debris weight and volume from a variety of debris scenes are presented in this research.