Geotechnical characterisation of coal spoil piles using high-resolution optical and multispectral data: A machine learning approach

Geotechnical characterisation of spoil piles has traditionally relied on the expertise of field specialists, which can be both hazardous and time-consuming. Although unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) show promise as a remote sensing tool in various applications; accurately segmenting and classifying very high-resolution remote sensing images of heterogeneous terrains, such as mining spoil piles with irregular morphologies, presents significant challenges. The proposed method adopts a robust approach that combines morphology-based segmentation, as well as spectral, textural, structural, and statistical feature extraction techniques to overcome the difficulties associated with spoil pile characterisation. Additionally, it incorporates minimum redundancy maximum relevance (mRMR) based feature selection and machine learning-based classification. This automated characterisation will serve as a proactive tool for dump stability assessment, providing crucial data for improved stability models and contributing to a greener and more responsible mining industry.