Object-based urban land cover classification using rule inheritance over very high-resolution multisensor and multitemporal data

Very high spatial and temporal resolution remote sensing data facilitate mapping highly complex and diverse urban environments. This study analyzed and demonstrated the usefulness of combined high-resolution aerial digital images and elevation data, and its processing using object-based image analysis for mapping urban land covers and quantifying buildings. It is observed that mapping heterogeneous features across large urban areas is time consuming and challenging. This study presents and demonstrates an approach for formulating an optimal land cover classification rule set over small representative training urban area image, and its subsequent transfer to the multisensor, multitemporal images. The classification results over the training area showed an overall accuracy of 96%, and the application of rule set to different sensor images of other test areas resulted in reduced accuracies of 91% for the same sensor, 90% and 86% for the different sensors temporal data. The comparison of reference and classified buildings showed ±4% detection errors. Classification through a transferred rule set reduced the classification accuracy by about 5%–10%. However, the trade-off for this accuracy drop was about a 75% reduction in processing time for performing classification in the training area. The factors influencing the classification accuracies were mainly the shadow and temporal changes in the class characteristics.