SEWCAM: online tool for the manual annotation of sewer inspections
Sewerage is one of the most important and expensive infrastructures in modern society. By computerizing the pipeline inspection process, this infrastructure can be managed much more efficiently due to an increase in performed inspections leading to a good control and prevention of the entire sewer system.
And this is precisely where the user has the possibility of using a new service called SEWCAM: an online tool that happens to solve a need in the water sector.
Let’s go deeper into the details of what it is.
And what is SEWCAM?
SEWCAM is an online, cloud based, service for the manual annotation of sewerage defects in CCTV inspections.
Recall that sewer pipes are routinely inspected on site with CCTV equipment.
Subsequently, an operator reviews the video images to classify the defects in the pipes and make a recommendation on possible interventions.
And here the user has the online tool SEWCAM at his disposal. Finding defects and filing them is easier than ever with this new service.
What does SEWCAM offer?
- An online tool to manually annotating CCTV sewer inspections.
- Totally controlled by the user.
- Historic database of videos for the site/company.
- Final reports with all defects labelled in several national standards (NASSCO, WSA, EU-13508, WRc, etc.).
- Possibility of downloading the original video and the one with the annotated defects labelled on the video images.
For more information, please visit the following SEWCAM link.
The SEWCAM main screen
Once the video to be analyzed is uploaded, we access the main SEWCAM screen. Here we find two clearly differentiated areas.
On the left side of the main screen we have the video to be analyzed and a series of controls.
The user has at his disposal the typical video forward, reverse and stop controls. It also offers the option to go frame by frame to detect exactly the point of the defect and refine the detected position further.
Once the defect point is reached, the detected defect is selected and saved.
We will repeat this process as many times as defects are detected manually.
On the right side of the main screen we see the area where all the defects found appear.
Each defect found will be added to a table where we can know the time interval of the defect, its description and an image where if we click, we will go directly to the position of the video with the defect found.
We can also edit again to change the detected defect or simply delete it, as well as sort by the desired field and the search function, always useful to find the desired text.
Advantages and benefits of SEWCAM
One of the great advantages with SEWCAM is that the user has an online tool for the manual annotation of defects, which is inexpensive, hardware agnostic, and does not depend on the criteria of third parties.
Another great advantage that we find is that the operator does not need to analyze the data in situ and can do it later in more detail. In this way we will gain in reliability when detecting defects and thus carry out subsequent actions on the sewage system.
Once the user has processed the video manually, they will be able to download it with the labels of the defects on the screen. This is of great help and benefit to the technician.
Finally, the reports generated from the defect detections will be very useful to the operator when making decisions about the damaged sewer.
We hope this article has been useful to you. If you are interested in this new SEWCAM service and you think we can help you, here is the link where you can contact us and explain more about your needs. We will be happy to offer a free trial for this exciting tool.