A hybrid data fusion approach to the hierarchical mapping of land-cover types in the urban core. Issue 19 (2nd October 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Kokje, Amit; Gao, Jay; de Freitas, C. R.
• Is Part Of: International journal of remote sensing. Volume 38:Issue 19(2017)
• Page Start: 5338
• Page End: 5356
• Publication Date: 2017-10-02
• Subjects: Remote sensing -- Periodicals; Télédétection -- Périodiques; 621.3678
• DOI: 10.1080/01431161.2017.1339923
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0143-1161

Abstract

ABSTRACT: It is difficult to map land covers in the urban core due to the close proximity of high-rise buildings. This difficulty is overcome with a proposed hybrid, the hierarchical method via fusing PAN-sharpened WorldView-2 imagery with light detection and ranging (lidar) data for central Auckland, New Zealand, in two stages. After all features were categorized into 'ground' and 'above-ground' using lidar data, ground features were classified from the satellite data using the object-oriented method. Above-ground covers were grouped into four types from lidar-derived digital surface model (nDSM) based on rules. Ground and above-ground features were classified at an accuracy of 94.1% (kappa coefficient or κ = 0.913) and 93.7% ( κ = 0.873), respectively. After the two results were merged, the nine covers achieved an overall accuracy of 93.7% ( κ = 0.902). This accuracy is highly comparable to those reported in the literature, but was achieved at much less computational expense and complexity owing to the hybrid workflow that optimizes the efficiency of the respective classifiers. This hybrid method of classification is robust and applicable to other scenes without modification as the required parameters are derived automatically from the data to be classified. It is also flexible in incorporating user-defined rules targeting hard-to-discriminate covers. Mapping accuracy from the fused complementary data sets was adversely affected by shadows in the satellite image and the differential acquisition time of imagery and lidar data.