Monitoring of granite quarries using deep learning and UAV photogrammetry in Bengaluru, India

Oussama Himmy, Thanh Thi Nguyen, Prem Jose Vazhacharickal and Andreas Buerkert

PLOS ONE, 2025, vol. 20, issue 11, 1-21

Abstract: Granite quarrying, a cornerstone of the construction industry in South India, yields significant economic benefits but poses substantial environmental and social challenges, including land degradation, dust pollution, alternation of the water regime, and harsh working conditions. Rapid urban expansion has escalated granite demand in many countries, intensifying quarrying activities. This trend is particularly pronounced in Bengaluru, India, where rural-urban transformation causes concerns about environmental sustainability and social-ecological consequences of urban resource mining. This study proposes an innovative multi-modal framework to monitor granite quarrying in Bengaluru by combining deep learning with a 2024 dry-season multi-date Sentinel-2 composite for quarry segmentation and UAV SfM-MVS photogrammetry for volumetrics. We benchmark five CNN architectures—U-Net, PSPNet, DeepLabV3 + , FCN, and EMANet. In-area development results peaked with DeepLabV3+ (F1 ≈ 94.6%, IoU ≈ 89.7%), while an external, geographically independent audit established PSPNet as the most robust model (F1 = 93.4% [95% CI 90.8–95.9], IoU = 87.6%) with significantly fewer errors than alternatives (McNemar tests, FDR-adjusted p

Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0334493

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0334493

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