Method and system for estimating an operating state of a facility via imaging of electromagnetic radiation

In a method and system for estimating an operating state of a facility, an imaging sensor (or camera) is positioned to acquire image data from a facility of interest. Image data received from the imaging sensor is stored and then processed by a computer to identify one or more regions of interest within each image. A model is then created that relates data from the pixels (i.e., pixel values) from one or more of the identified regions of interest in the image data to the operating state for the facility. As new image data is received, that image data is input into the model to estimate the operating state of the facility, and the estimated operating state is then reported to market participants.