Shadow Detection

Shadow Detection identifies all pixels corresponding to shadows in satellite images. The block runs on Pleiades Streaming (recommended) or SPOT Streaming Data Blocks and outputs a shadow mask with the probability of each pixel corresponding to a shadow. The solution uses deep learning techniques for computer vision and is constantly improved with subsequent updates; thus far, it has been trained on tens of thousands of semantically annotated images. The model is used as part of the Tree Height Detection from Shadows block.

Due to its complexity, this analysis block requires a significant running time. There are no restrictions on image dimensions, but the computing time will increase with the size of the image. We recommend using the Raster Tiling block upstream to speed up processing and reduce infrastructure costs for large areas.

Use cases include Urban Planning & Construction, Solar Power Planning, Land Use and Management, Economic Development Tracking.

Supported workflows

Data platform:

• Catalog -> Pléiades Display or SPOT 6/7 Display -> Order and get the asset from storage of UP42
• In Projects workflows, Processing from Storage -> DIMAP GeoTIFF conversion -> Raster Tiling -> Shadow Detection

Data blocks:

• Pléiades Display (Streaming) or SPOT 6/7 Display (Streaming) -> Raster Tiling -> Shadow Detection

Video tutorial

We have created a 5-minute demonstration on running an analysis process using the Spacept Shadow Detector Machine Learning model, which is accessible on YouTube here.

Example Input

{
   "oneatlas-pleiades-aoiclipped:1":{
      "ids":null,
      "bbox":[
         -1.039205,
         46.732618,
         -1.026172,
         46.743978
      ],
      "time":"2018-01-01T00:00:00+00:00/2020-12-31T23:59:59+00:00",
      "limit":1,
      "zoom_level":18,
      "time_series":null,
      "max_cloud_cover":100,
      "panchromatic_band":false
   },
   
   "tiling:1":{
      "nodata":null,
      "tile_width":512,
      "tile_height":512,
      "match_extents":false,
      "output_prefix":"",
      "augmentation_factor":1,
      "discard_empty_tiles":true
   },
   
   "shadow-detection:1":{
   }
}