Quantification of the suitable rooftop area for solar panel installation from overhead imagery using convolutional neural networks

Abstract

The integration of solar technology in the built environment is realized mainly through rooftop-installed panels. In this paper, we leverage state-of-the-art Machine Learning and computer vision techniques applied on overhead images to provide a geo-localization of the available rooftop surfaces for solar panel installation. We further exploit a 3D building database to associate them to the corresponding roof geometries by means of a geospatial post-processing approach. The stand-alone Convolutional Neural Network used to segment suitable rooftop areas reaches an intersection over union of 64% and an accuracy of 93%, while a post-processing step using building database improves the rejection of false positives. The model is applied to a case study area in the canton of Geneva and the results are compared with another recent method used in the literature to derive the realistic available area.