Geographic Object-Based Image Analysis of Changes in Land Cover in the Coastal Zones of the Red River Delta (Vietnam)

The majority of the population and economic activity of the northern half of Vietnam is clustered in the Red River Delta and about half of the country’s rice production takes place here. There are significant problems associated with its geographical position and the intensive exploitation of resources by an overabundant population (population density of 962 inhabitants/km2). Some thirty years after the economic liberalization and the opening of the country to international markets, agricultural land use patterns in the Red River Delta, particularly in the coastal area, have undergone many changes. Remote sensing is a particularly powerful tool in processing and providing spatial information for monitoring land use changes. The main methodological objective is to find a solution to process the many heterogeneous coastal land use parameters, so as to describe it in all its complexity, specifically by making use of the latest European satellite data (Sentinel-2). This complexity is due to local variations in ecological conditions, but also to anthropogenic factors that directly and indirectly influence land use dynamics. The methodological objective was to develop a new Geographic Object-based Image Analysis (GEOBIA) approach for mapping coastal areas using Sentinel-2 data and Landsat 8. By developing a new segmentation, accuracy measure, in this study was determined that segmentation accuracies decrease with increasing segmentation scales and that the negative impact of under-segmentation errors significantly increases at a large scale. An Estimation of Scale Parameter (ESP) tool was then used to determine the optimal segmentation parameter values. A popular machine learning algorithms (Random Forests-RFs) is used. For all classifications algorithm, an increase in overall accuracy was observed with the full synergistic combination of available data sets.

Temporal sequence Object-based CNN(TS-OCNN) for crop classification from fine resolution remote sensing image time-series

Accurate crop distribution mapping is required for crop yield prediction and field management. Due to rapid progress in remote sensing technology, fine spatial resolution(FSR) remotely sensed imagery now offers great opportunities for mapping crop types in great detail. However, within-class variance can hamper attempts to discriminate crop classes at fine resolutions. Multi-temporal FSR remotely sensed imagery provides a means of increasing crop classification from FSR imagery, although current methods do not exploit the available information fully. In this research, a novel Temporal Sequence Object-based Convolutional Neural Network(TS-OCNN) was proposed to classify agricultural crop type from FSR image time-series. An object-based CNN(OCNN) model was adopted in the TS-OCNN to classify images at the object level(i.e., segmented objects or crop parcels), thus, maintaining the precise boundary information of crop parcels. The combination of image time-series was first utilized as the input to the OCNN model to produce an ‘original’ or baseline classification. Then the single-date images were fed automatically into the deep learning model scene-by-scene in order of image acquisition date to increase successively the crop classification accuracy. By doing so, the joint information in the FSR multi-temporal observations and the unique individual information from the single-date images were exploited comprehensively for crop classification. The effectiveness of the proposed approach was investigated using multitemporal SAR and optical imagery, respectively, over two heterogeneous agricultural areas. The experimental results demonstrated that the newly proposed TS-OCNN approach consistently increased crop classification accuracy, and achieved the greatest accuracies(82.68% and 87.40%) in comparison with state-of-the-art benchmark methods, including the object-based CNN(OCNN)(81.63% and85.88%), object-based image analysis(OBIA)(78.21% and 84.83%), and standard pixel-wise CNN(79.18%and 82.90%). The proposed approach is the first known attempt to explore simultaneously the joint information from image time-series with the unique information from single-date images for crop classification using a deep learning framework. The TS-OCNN, therefore, represents a new approach for agricultural landscape classification from multi-temporal FSR imagery. Besides, it is readily generalizable to other landscapes(e.g., forest landscapes), with a wide application prospect.

Object-based classification of cloudy coastal areas using medium-resolution optical and SAR images for vulnerability assessment of marine disaster

Efficient and accurate access to coastal land cover information is of great significance for marine disaster prevention and mitigation.Although the popular and common sensors of land resource satellites provide free and valuable images to map the land cover,coastal areas often encounter significant cloud cover,especially in tropical areas,which makes the classification in those areas non-ideal.To solve this problem,we proposed a framework of combining medium-resolution optical images and synthetic aperture radar(SAR)data with the recently popular object-based image analysis(OBIA)method and used the Landsat Operational Land Imager(OLI)and Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar(PALSAR)images acquired in Singapore in 2017 as a case study.We designed experiments to confirm two critical factors of this framework:one is the segmentation scale that determines the average object size,and the other is the classification feature.Accuracy assessments of the land cover indicated that the optimal segmentation scale was between 40 and 80,and the features of the combination of OLI and SAR resulted in higher accuracy than any individual features,especially in areas with cloud cover.Based on the land cover generated by this framework,we assessed the vulnerability of the marine disasters of Singapore in 2008 and 2017 and found that the high-vulnerability areas mainly located in the southeast and increased by 118.97 km2 over the past decade.To clarify the disaster response plan for different geographical environments,we classified risk based on altitude and distance from shore.The newly increased high-vulnerability regions within 4 km offshore and below 30 m above sea level are at high risk;these regions may need to focus on strengthening disaster prevention construction.This study serves as a typical example of using remote sensing techniques for the vulnerability assessment of marine disasters,especially those in cloudy coastal areas.

An Integrated Framework for Road Detection in Dense Urban Area from High-Resolution Satellite Imagery and Lidar Data

Automatic road detection, in dense urban areas, is a challenging application in the remote sensing community. This is mainly because of physical and geometrical variations of road pixels, their spectral similarity to other features such as buildings, parking lots and sidewalks, and the obstruction by vehicles and trees. These problems are real obstacles in precise detection and identification of urban roads from high-resolution satellite imagery. One of the promising strategies to deal with this problem is using multi-sensors data to reduce the uncertainties of detection. In this paper, an integrated object-based analysis framework was developed for detecting and extracting various types of urban roads from high-resolution optical images and Lidar data. The proposed method is designed and implemented using a rule-oriented approach based on a masking strategy. The overall accuracy (OA) of the final road map was 89.2%, and the kappa coefficient of agreement was 0.83, which show the efficiency and performance of the method in different conditions and interclass noises. The results also demonstrate the high capability of this object-based method in simultaneous identification of a wide variety of road elements in complex urban areas using both high-resolution satellite images and Lidar data.

基于深度学习融合OBIA的黄土高原小流域淤地坝系提取

淤地坝对于防治黄土高原水土流失有不可替代的作用,因此精确提取淤地范围和淤地坝点位对研究黄土高原水土有重要意义。现有图像分类方法中缺乏对淤地坝地形特征的考虑,容易被误判为梯田或土堆。除此之外,自动提取研究多集中于淤地范围提取,淤地坝点位仍依赖人工判读。因此,提出一种自动提取淤地坝系的方法:通过深度学习融合面向对象的影像分析(OBIA)方法提取韭园沟流域淤地范围,再利用水文分析方法提取淤地坝点位。结果表明:本方法提取的淤地范围精准率、召回率、F1Score分别为81.97%、90.94%、89.70%,F1Score与仅使用OBIA方法相比提升了21.94%。淤地坝点位的自动识别准确率为81.08%,完整率为88.89%,与前人目视解译的准确度相近,并实现了淤地坝范围和淤地坝点位的全要素提取。研究结果可为黄土高原淤地坝空间布局优化和水土流失评估等分析提供重要基础数据。

Incorporating DeepLabv3+and object-based image analysis for semantic segmentation of very high resolution remote sensing images

Semantic segmentation of remote sensing images is an important but unsolved problem in the remote sensing society.Advanced image semantic segmentation models,such as DeepLabv3+,have achieved astonishing performance for semantically labeling very high resolution(VHR)remote sensing images.However,it is difficult for these models to capture the precise outlines of ground objects and explore the context information that revealing relationships among image objects for optimizing segmentation results.Consequently,this study proposes a semantic segmentation method for VHR images by incorporating deep learning semantic segmentation model(DeepLabv3+)and objectbased image analysis(OBIA),wherein DSM is employed to provide geometric information to enhance the interpretation of VHR images.The proposed method first obtains two initial probabilistic labeling predictions using a DeepLabv3+network on spectral image and a random forest(RF)classifier on hand-crafted features,respectively.These two predictions are then integrated by Dempster-Shafer(D-S)evidence theory to be fed into an object-constrained higher-order conditional random field(CRF)framework to estimate the final semantic labeling results with the consideration of the spatial contextual information.The proposed method is applied to the ISPRS 2D semantic labeling benchmark,and competitive overall accuracies of 90.6%and 85.0%are achieved for Vaihingen and Potsdam datasets,respectively.

Evaluating pixel-based vs.object-based image analysis approaches for lithological discrimination using VNIR data of WorldView-3

The object-based against pixel-based image analysis approaches were assessed for lithological mapping in a geologically complex terrain using Visible Near Infrared(VNIR)bands of WorldView-3(WV-3)satellite imagery.The study area is Hormuz Island,southern Iran,a salt dome composed of dominant sedimentary and igneous rocks.When performing the object-based image analysis(OBLA)approach,the textural and spectral characteristics of lithological features were analyzed by the use of support vector machine(SVM)algorithm.However,in the pixelbased image analysis(PBIA),the spectra of lithological end-members,extracted from imagery,were used through the spectral angle mapper(SAM)method.Several test samples were used in a confusion matrix to assess the accuracy of classification methods quantitatively.Results showed that OBIA was capable of lithological mapping with an overall accuracy of 86.54%which was 19.33%greater than the accuracy of PBIA.OBIA also reduced the salt-and-pepper artifact pixels and produced a more realistic map with sharper lithological borders.This research showed limitations of pixel-based method due to relying merely on the spectral characteristics of rock types when applied to high-spatial-resolution VNIR bands of WorldView-3 imagery.It is concluded that the application of an object-based image analysis approach obtains a more accurate lithological classification when compared to a pixel-based image analysis algorithm.

The application of ResU-net and OBIA for landslide detection from multi-temporal Sentinel-2 images

Landslide detection is a hot topic in the remote sensing community,particularly with the current rapid growth in volume(and variety)of Earth observation data and the substantial progress of computer vision.Deep learning algorithms,especially fully convolutional networks(FCNs),and variations like the ResU-Net have been used recently as rapid and automatic landslide detection approaches.Although FCNs have shown cutting-edge results in automatic landslide detection,accuracy can be improved by adding prior knowledge through possible frameworks.This study evaluates a rulebased object-based image analysis(OBIA)approach built on probabilities resulting from the ResU-Net model for landslide detection.We train the ResU-Net model using a landslide dataset comprising landslide inventories from various geographic regions,including our study area and test the testing area not used for training.In the OBIA stage,we frst calculate land cover and image difference indices for pre-and post-landslide multi-temporal images.Next,we use the generated indices and the resulting ResU-Net probabilities for image segmentation;the extracted landslide object candidates are then optimized using rule-based classification.In the result validation section,the landslide detection of the proposed integration of the ResU-Net with a rule-based classification of OBIA is compared with that of the ResU-Net alone.Our proposed approach improves the mean intersection-over-union of the resulting map from the ResU-Net by more than 22%.

Analysis of large-scale UAV images using a multi-scale hierarchical representation

Unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)-based imaging systems have many superiorities compared with other platforms,such as high flexibility and low cost in collecting images,providing wide application prospects.However,the acquisition of the UAV-based image commonly results in very high resolution and very large-scale images,which poses great challenges for subsequent applications.Therefore,an efficient representation of large-scale UAV images is necessary for the extraction of the required information in a reasonable time.In this work,we proposed a multi-scale hierarchical representation,i.e.binary partition tree,for analyzing large-scale UAV images.More precisely,we first obtained an initial partition of images by an oversegmentation algorithm,i.e.the simple linear iterative clustering.Next,we merged the similar superpixels to build an object-based hierarchical structure by fully considering the spectral and spatial information of the superpixels and their topological relationships.Moreover,objects of interest and optimal segmentation were obtained using object-based analysis methods with the hierarchical structure.Experimental results on processing the post-seismic UAV images of the 2013 Ya’an earthquake and the mosaic of images in the South-west of Munich demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our proposed method.

1990～2015年韩国土地覆被变化及其驱动因素

以中等分辨率Landsat系列影像为数据源,利用面向对象的图像分析(OBIA)方法,研究1990~2015年韩国土地覆被变化的主要特征与驱动因素。研究发现:近25 a来,韩国人工表面、林地、湿地、耕地和水体面积变化较大。人工表面扩张最为明显,面积增加了1 847.24 km2(+38.97%),主要发生在以首尔为中心的首都圈地区,多由耕地和林地转化而来。林地、湿地和耕地面积分别减少776.71 km2、707.32 km2和426.65 km2。过去25 a间韩国土地覆被变化主要集中分布在海拔较低(<100 m)和坡度较小(<3°)的区域。人类活动因素,如人口增长、城市扩张、经济发展及政策调控等是造成韩国土地覆被变化的主要原因。

基于J48决策树的面向对象方法的土地覆被信息提取

过去10多a来,面向对象的影像分析方法在高分辨率影像信息提取中表现出了明显优势,得到了快速发展。该方法中一个难题是,如何有效地建立满足健壮性和通用性准则的分类规则集。基于数据挖掘原理的决策树方法有望提供有效的解决方案。选用WEKA J48算法从影像光谱、纹理和地形特征等诸多参数中优选出部分参数构建决策树分类模型,以此建立分类规则集,并集成于面向对象的影像分类方法中。利用Landsat5 TM影像和ASTER数字高程模型数据进行的甘肃省会宁县白草塬地区土地覆被分类的结果表明,本方法所建立的分类规则集具有较佳的健壮性和通用性,其分类精度明显优于基于像元的最大似然法和基于试错性规则集的面向对象法。

遥感图像多尺度分割算法与矢量化算法的集成

在遥感图像处理和分析软件中,图像分割/分类和矢量化是前后独立的过程:先分割/分类,再矢量化整幅图像。由于矢量化后得到的矢量文件未写入图像对象(区域、图斑)的特征信息,只能用于显示而不能用于后续操作。此外,处理复杂图像时还存在矢量文件多边形数目与分割/分类后图像区域数目不一致的问题。为此,将多尺度分割算法与矢量化算法进行一体化集成。对遥感图像进行多尺度分割得到图像对象链表,逐个对图像对象做矢量化处理,同时把特征统计信息写入多边形属性中。集成后不仅可保证矢量多边形数目与图像对象数目完全一致,而且由于特征统计信息已作为多边形区域的属性保存在多边形中,后续的多尺度分割、区域合并、空间关系操作等均可基于矢量多边形进行。

Big Earth data:disruptive changes in Earth observation data management and analysis?

Turning Earth observation(EO)data consistently and systematically into valuable global information layers is an ongoing challenge for the EO community.Recently,the term‘big Earth data’emerged to describe massive EO datasets that confronts analysts and their traditional workflows with a range of challenges.We argue that the altered circumstances must be actively intercepted by an evolution of EO to revolutionise their application in various domains.The disruptive element is that analysts and end-users increasingly rely on Web-based workflows.In this contribution we study selected systems and portals,put them in the context of challenges and opportunities and highlight selected shortcomings and possible future developments that we consider relevant for the imminent uptake of big Earth data.

Effects of atmospheric correction and pansharpening on LULC classification accuracy using WorldView-2 imagery

Changes of Land Use and Land Cover(LULC)affect atmospheric,climatic,and biological spheres of the earth.Accurate LULC map offers detail information for resources management and intergovernmental cooperation to debate global warming and biodiversity reduction.This paper examined effects of pansharpening and atmospheric correction on LULC classification.Object-Based Support Vector Machine(OB-SVM)and Pixel-Based Maximum Likelihood Classifier(PB-MLC)were applied for LULC classification.Results showed that atmospheric correction is not necessary for LULC classification if it is conducted in the original multispectral image.Nevertheless,pansharpening plays much more important roles on the classification accuracy than the atmospheric correction.It can help to increase classification accuracy by 12%on average compared to the ones without pansharpening.PB-MLC and OB-SVM achieved similar classification rate.This study indicated that the LULC classification accuracy using PB-MLC and OB-SVM is 82%and 89%respectively.A combination of atmospheric correction,pansharpening,and OB-SVM could offer promising LULC maps from WorldView-2 multispectral and panchromatic images.

Mapping informal settlement indicators using object-oriented analysis in the Middle East

Mapping informal settlements is crucial for resource and utility management and planning.In 2003,the UN-Habitat developed a process for mapping and monitoring urban inequality to support reporting against the sustainable development goals(SDGs).Informal settlement indicators are used as a framework to carry out image analysis,and include vegetation extent,lacunarity of housing structures/vacant land,road segment type and materials,texture measures of built-up areas,roofing extent of built-up areas and dwelling size.Objectbased image analysis(OBIA)methods are recommended to identify informal settlements.This paper documents the application of OBIA to map informal settlements,drawing on the ontology of Kohli et al.(2012)and the indicators of Owen and Wong(2013)for a Middle Eastern city.Three informal settlements with different land use histories were selected to represent old and new informal settlements in the city of Jeddah,Saudi Arabia.Vegetation extent was the most successful indicator detected,with 100% producer accuracy and over 84% user accuracy,followed by the road network,with 84% producer and user accuracies in older informal settlements and 73% producer accuracy and 96% user accuracy across all case studies.Lacunarity of housing structures/vacant land was detected well in informal settlements.The texture measure indicator was detected using GLCM_(Ent)(R)with low producer accuracy across all case studies.The roofing extent of the built-up area is detected with better producer and user accuracies than texture measures.The dwellings size indicator generally failed to distinguish formal from informal settlements.Informal and formal were distinguished with an overall accuracy of 83%.This research concludes that OBIA is a useful method to map informal settlement indicators in Middle Eastern cities.However,a generic ruleset for mapping informal settlements remains elusive,and each indicator requires significant localised‘tuning’.

A new framework for GEOBIA: accurate individual plant extraction and detection using high-resolution RGB data from UAVs

Citrus(Citrus reticulata),which is an important economic crop worldwide,is often managed in a labor-intensive and inefficient manner in developing countries,thereby necessitating more rapid and accurate alternatives tofield surveys for improved crop management.In this study,we propose a novel method for individual tree segmentation from unmanned aerial vehicle remote sensing(RS)using a combination of geographic object-based image analysis(GEOBIA)and layer-adaptive Euclidean distance transformation-based watershed segmentation(LAEDT-WS).First,we use a GEOBIA support vector machine classifier that is optimized for features and parameters to identify the boundaries of citrus tree canopies accurately by generating mask images.Thereafter,our LAEDT workflow separates connected canopies and facilitates the accurate segmentation of individual canopies using WS.Our method exhibited an F1-score improvement of 10.75%compared to the traditional WS method based on the canopy height model.Furthermore,it achieved 0.01%and 1.38%higher F1-scores than the state-of-the-art deep learning detection networks YOLOX and YOLACT,respectively,on the test plot.Our method can be extended to detect larger-scale or more complex structured crops or economic plants by introducing morefinely detailed and transferable RS images,such as high-resolution or LiDAR-derived images,to improve the mask base map.

遥感影像多尺度分割中最优尺度的选取及评价

多尺度分割是面向对象图像分析技术的前提和关键,多尺度分割的质量直接影响着面向对象分类的精度,但尺度选择仍然是多尺度分割中的一个难题。针对此问题,根据遥感影像的最优分割尺度与影像上目标复杂度密切相关的事实,提出了一种自上而下基于分割对象复杂度选取最优尺度的方法。该方法在分割过程中,提取每一对象的影像特征构建其复杂度函数,通过设置阈值,经迭代计算来确定每一对象的最优分割尺度,进而得到具有全局最优尺度的分割结果,并将其应用于ZY-3多光谱数据和GF-2融合影像,得到分割和分类结果。并将其与单一最优尺度和非监督评价法的分割及分类结果进行比较,结果表明:该方法能够获取与地面目标相匹配的分割尺度,改善了分割效果,提高了分类精度,具有一定实用价值。

1990-2015年朝鲜土地覆被变化及驱动力分析

基于Landsat TM/OLI遥感数据,采用面向对象的图像分析方法,提取1990年和2015年朝鲜土地覆被信息,定量描绘土地覆被变化。结果表明:25年间朝鲜土地覆被共变化1.1×104km2,林地和湿地分别减少4976.1 km2、203.3 km2,耕地和人工表面分别增加4821.5 km2、80 km2;耕地面积增加明显,94.6%的耕地来源于林地,两者的主要转化区在海拔为100～1000 m、坡度为8°～35°的坡地;黄海北道的土地覆被变化最显著,其次是平安南道,两江道最不明显。人口增长、经济环境退化和宏观政策的调控等人为因素是推动朝鲜土地覆被变化的主要原因。本文弥补了朝鲜长时间尺度土地覆被变化研究的空白,同时为东北亚地区土地资源可持续利用和生态环境保护奠定了基础。

Effects of spatial resolution of remotely sensed data on estimating urban impervious surfaces

Impervious surfaces are the result of urbanization that can be explicitly quantified, managed and controlled at each stage of land development. It is a very useful environmental indicator that can be used to measure the impacts of urbanization on surface runoff, water quality, air quality, biodiversity and rnicroclimate. Therefore, accurate estimation of impervious surfaces is critical for urban environmental monitoring, land management, decision-making and urban planning. Many approaches have been developed to estimate surface imperviousness, using remotely sensed data with various spatial resolutions. However, few studies, have investigated the effects of spatial resolution on estimating surface imperviousness. We compare medium-resolution Landsat data with high-resolution SPOT images to quantify the imperviousness in Beijing, China. The results indicated that the overall 91% accuracy of estimates of imperviousness based on TM data was considerably higher than the 81% accuracy of the SPOT data. The higher resolution SPOT data did not always predict the imperviousness of the land better than the TM data. At the whole city level, the TM data better predicts the percentage cover of impervious surfaces. At the sub-city level, however, the ring belts from the central core to the urban-rural peripheral, the SPOT data may better predict the imperviousness. These results highlighted the need to combine multiple resolution data to quantify the percentage of imperviousness, as higher resolution data do not necessarily lead to more accurate estimates. The methodology and results in this study can be utilized to identify the most suitable remote sensing data to quickly and efficiently extract the pattern of the impervious land, which could provide the base for further study on many related urban environmental problems.

Deep learning for land use and land cover classification from the Ecuadorian Paramo.

The paramo,plays an important role in our ecosystems as They balance the water resources and can retain substantial quantities of carbon.This research was carried out in the province of Tungurahua,specifically the Quero district.The aim is to develop a classification of the land use land cover(LULC)in the paramo using satellite imagery using several classifiers and determine which one obtains the best performance,for which three different approaches were applied:Pixel-Based Image Analysis(PBIA),Geographic Object-Based Image Analysis(GEOBIA),and a Deep Neural Network(DNN).Various parameters were used,such as the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index(NDVI),the Bare Soil Index(BSI),texture,altitude,and slope.Seven classes were used:paramo,pasture,crops,herbaceous vegetation,urban,shrubrainland,and forestry plantations.The data was obtained with the help of onsite technical experts,using geo-referencing and reference maps.Among the models used the highest-ranked was DNN with an overall precision of 87.43%,while for the paramo class specifically,GEOBIA reached a precision of 95%.