Real-time oil spill concentration assessment through fluorescence imaging and deep learning
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Abstract
Oil spills may pose severe ecological and socioeconomic threats, necessitating rapid and accurate environmental assessment. Traditional assessment methods used to determine the extent of a spill including gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, satellite imaging, and visual surveys, are often time-consuming, expensive, and limited by weather conditions or sampling constraints. Furthermore, these methods frequently struggle to provide real-time data crucial for prompt decision-making during spill emergencies. This study addresses these limitations by combining fluorescence imaging, deep learning, a mobile application, and a data management system for automated and real-time oil spill assessment. Our approach leverages a convolutional neural network architecture for feature extraction coupled with a custom regression model, trained and evaluated on a self-curated comprehensive dataset of 1,530 fluorescence images from two distinct oil types, a napthalenic crude oil and an aromatic-napthalenic crude oil, at concentrations ranging from 0 to 500 mg/L. The proposed approach demonstrates superior performance compared to both traditional machine learning models and more complex deep learning architectures, achieving an R² score of 0.9958 and RMSE of 9.28. The application enables rapid, cost-effective field measurements with robust data tracking and analysis capabilities. This research advances oil spill monitoring technology with a scalable solution that balances accuracy, speed, and accessibility for real-time environmental assessment and emergency response.
| Publication type | Article |
|---|---|
| Publication Subtype | Journal Article |
| Title | Real-time oil spill concentration assessment through fluorescence imaging and deep learning |
| Series title | Journal of Hazardous Materials |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2025.139374 |
| Volume | 496 |
| Publication Date | July 27, 2025 |
| Year Published | 2025 |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Elsevier |
| Contributing office(s) | Columbia Environmental Research Center |
| Description | 139374, 10 p. |