Internet-based visual snow-cover monitoring and measuring system

In this paper, an Intemet-based snow-cover monitoring system is developed which analyzes visual image of drifted snow and measures the amount of snowing. The system is composed with a reference ruler, a CCD camera, and a PC with an image processing unit. The snow-depth is estimated based on the position of the lowest uncovered marker on the ruler which is extracted from the captured image. An image processing algorithm is devised to obtain proper resolution and good accuracy of the uncovered marker position in spite of the week intensity of ambient light and disturbances from the light rays of outdoors. The system also acts as monitoring server, which transfers the raw images in real-time to a remotely located client using TCP/IP. With bi-direction communication through Internet, users can adjust the orientation of the camera view. Experimental results show that this system improves reliability and accuracy of measurement of drifted snow.