Pier scour monitoring system by bed-level image tracking

A scour monitoring system with a micro camera tracking the bed-level images is proposed in this study.Two image recognition algorithms have been developed to support the bed-level image tracking approach.Through the laboratory experiments of pier scour,this study demonstrates that the proposed system is able to accurately monitor the scour-depth evolution in real time.In addition,five commonly-used temporal scour models are employed to simulate scour-depth evolution and their results are compared with monitoring data.In general,the results indicate that the proposed scour monitoring system has the potential for further applications in the field.