Systems and methods to determine vegetation encroachment along a right-of-way

A method to determine vegetation migration encroachment along a right-of-way associated with an underground feature, the method comprising:

• capturing images of one or more sections of the right-of-way at during a selected time period;
• pre-processing the images so as to define pre-processed images;
• determining vegetation migration encroachment onto the right-of-way by application of the pre-processed images to a trained machine learning model;
• and
• in response to a determination that the vegetation migration encroachment exceeds a threshold, generating an indication of vegetation migration encroachment.

A system for managing and determining vegetation encroachment along a pipeline right-of-way, the system comprising:

• an image capture circuitry configured to:
• receive images of one or more sections of the pipeline right-of-way;
• and
• a vegetation encroachment modeling circuitry configured to:
• pre-process the images based on one or more of a geographic location for each of the images, known areas of interest, or a pipeline right-of-way buffer,
• apply pre-processed images to a trained machine learning model,
• determine an output image for each location represented in the images including indications of vegetation encroachment and the pipeline right-of-way,
• determine whether the vegetation encroachment in any output image exceeds a selected threshold, and
• in response to the vegetation encroachment exceeding the selected threshold, generate an indication of vegetation migration encroachment, the vegetation migration encroachment also including remedial action.

A computing device for determining vegetation encroachment along a pipeline right-of-way, the computing device comprising one or more processors and a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing software instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors:

• in response to reception of images of one or more sections of the pipeline right-of-way from a selected time period, georeference the images to correlate the images with a surface of a geographical location of the pipeline right-of-way;
• determine an area of interest for the images based on one or more of the geographical location of the pipeline right-of-way, previously known areas of interest, or corresponding selected inspection times;
• clip the area of interest for the images to define clipped images based on a pipeline right-of-way buffer;
• tile clipped images to a preselected size to define a plurality of tiled clipped images based on selected sizes utilized by a trained machine learning model;
• determine vegetation migration encroachment onto the pipeline right-of-way by application of the clipped images to the trained machine learning model;
• and
• in response to a determination that the vegetation migration encroachment exceeds a threshold, generate an indication of vegetation migration encroachment.