Rooftops detection with YOLOv8 from aerial imagery and a brief review on rooftop photovoltaic potential assessment

Abstract

Recent years have seen significant advancements in the switch from fossil fuel-based energy systems to renewable energy. Decentralized solar photovoltaic (PV) is one of the most promising energy sources since there is a lot of rooftop space, it is easy to install, and the cost of the PV panels is low. The determination of rooftop locations for PV installation is crucial for energy planning. With this context, this study aimed to detect the suitable rooftops of different shapes. The dataset of 5,076 building roofs used in this study was gathered by us utilizing a drone. This study identified ten distinct roof shapes accurately, including triangle, square, penta, hexa, hepta, octa, nona, deca, gabled roof, and hipped roof, using the most recent version of you only live once (YOLO), known as YOLOv8. Recent research revealed, YOLOv8 is more accurate than earlier YOLO models which is the reason of utilizing YOLOv8. Accuracy of this work of rooftops detection is 93.6%. Also, the precision, recall, and F1-score confidence curve showed good performances too. Finally, a brief review of the most recent studies on the evaluation of rooftop PV potential was conducted to provide insight into the use of solar energy.