加入空间-时相纹理的高分辨率图像城市建筑物物倒塌提取

将两种基于地统计学的纹理特征加入到高分辨率遥感影像的城市建筑物倒塌探测中,考察了多尺度纹理对探测结果的影响.采用基于单类支持向量机的多时相直接分类方法提取建筑物倒塌信息.以伊朗巴姆地区2003 年12 月地震前后的Quickbird 遥感影像为数据源,评价和验证了本文方法的有效性.研究表明,将多尺度的空间和时相纹理信息加入到高分辨率遥感影像的倒塌建筑物探测中,可以有效提高分类精度,该方法得到的结果可应用于灾害救援及评估.     

Change detection on LOD 2 building models with very high resolution spaceborne stereo imagery

Due to the fast development of the urban environment, the need for efficient maintenance and updating of 3D building models is ever increasing. Change detection is an essential step to spot the changed area for data (map/3D models) updating and urban monitoring. Traditional methods based on 2D images are no longer suitable for change detection in building scale, owing to the increased spectral variability of the building roofs and larger perspective distortion of the very high resolution (VHR) imagery. Change detection in 3D is increasingly being investigated using airborne laser scanning data or matched Digital Surface Models (DSM), but rare study has been conducted regarding to change detection on 3D city models with VHR images, which is more informative but meanwhile more complicated. This is due to the fact that the 3D models are abstracted geometric representation of the urban reality, while the VHR images record everything. In this paper, a novel method is proposed to detect changes directly on LOD (Level of Detail) 2 building models with VHR spaceborne stereo images from a different date, with particular focus on addressing the special characteristics of the 3D models. In the first step, the 3D building models are projected onto a raster grid, encoded with building object, terrain object, and planar faces. The DSM is extracted from the stereo imagery by hierarchical semi-global matching (SGM). In the second step, a multi-channel change indicator is extracted between the 3D models and stereo images, considering the inherent geometric consistency (IGC), height difference, and texture similarity for each planar face. Each channel of the indicator is then clustered with the Self-organizing Map (SOM), with “change”, “non-change” and “uncertain change” status labeled through a voting strategy. The “uncertain changes” are then determined with a Markov Random Field (MRF) analysis considering the geometric relationship between faces. In the third step, buildings are extracted combining the multispectral images and the DSM by morphological operators, and the new buildings are determined by excluding the verified unchanged buildings from the second step. Both the synthetic experiment with Worldview-2 stereo imagery and the real experiment with IKONOS stereo imagery are carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. It is shown that the proposed method can be applied as an effective way to monitoring the building changes, as well as updating 3D models from one epoch to the other.     

Assessing Optimal Image Fusion Methods for Very High Spatial Resolution Satellite Images to Support Coastal Monitoring

This study examines best image fusion approaches for generating pansharpened very high resolution (VHR) multispectral images to be utilized for monitoring coastal barrier island development. Selected fusion techniques assessed in this research come from the three categories of spectral substitution (e.g., Brovey transform and multiplicative merging), arithmetic merging (e.g., modified intensity-hue-saturation and principal component analysis), and spatial domain (e.g., high-pass filter, and subtractive resolution merge). The image fusion methods selected for this study were capable of producing pansharpened VHR images with more than three bands. Comparisons of fusion techniques were applied to images from three satellite sensors: United States commercial satellites IKONOS and QuickBird, and the Korean KOMPSAT II. Pansharpened VHR multispectral images were assessed by spectral and spatial quality measurements. Results satisfying both spectral and spatial quality revealed optimum pansharpened techniques necessary for regular coastal mapping of barrier islands. These techniques may also be used to assess the quality of recently available VHR imagery acquired by numerous international, government, and commercial VHR satellite programs.     

Class imbalance in unsupervised change detection – A diagnostic analysis from urban remote sensing

Automatic monitoring of changes on the Earth’s surface is an intrinsic capability and simultaneously a persistent methodological challenge in remote sensing, especially regarding imagery with very-high spatial resolution (VHR) and complex urban environments. In order to enable a high level of automatization, the change detection problem is solved in an unsupervised way to alleviate efforts associated with collection of properly encoded prior knowledge. In this context, this paper systematically investigates the nature and effects of class distribution and class imbalance in an unsupervised binary change detection application based on VHR imagery over urban areas. For this purpose, a diagnostic framework for sensitivity analysis of a large range of possible degrees of class imbalance is presented, which is of particular importance with respect to unsupervised approaches where the content of images and thus the occurrence and the distribution of classes are generally unknown a priori. Furthermore, this framework can serve as a general technique to evaluate model transferability in any two-class classification problem. The applied change detection approach is based on object-based difference features calculated from VHR imagery and subsequent unsupervised two-class clustering using k‐means, genetic k-means and self-organizing map (SOM) clustering. The results from two test sites with different structural characteristics of the built environment demonstrated that classification performance is generally worse in imbalanced class distribution settings while best results were reached in balanced or close to balanced situations. Regarding suitable accuracy measures for evaluating model performance in imbalanced settings, this study revealed that the Kappa statistics show significant response to class distribution while the true skill statistic was widely insensitive to imbalanced classes. In general, the genetic k-means clustering algorithm achieved the most robust results with respect to class imbalance while the SOM clustering exhibited a distinct optimization towards a balanced distribution of classes.     

FORSAT: a 3D forest monitoring system for cover mapping and volumetric 3D change detection

ABSTRACT

A 3D forest monitoring system, called FORSAT (a satellite very high resolution image processing platform for forest assessment), was developed for the extraction of 3D geometric forest information from very high resolution (VHR) satellite imagery and the automatic 3D change detection. FORSAT is composed of two complementary tasks: (1) the geometric and radiometric processing of satellite optical imagery and digital surface model (DSM) reconstruction by using a precise and robust image matching approach specially designed for VHR satellite imagery, (2) 3D surface comparison for change detection. It allows the users to import DSMs, align them using an advanced 3D surface matching approach and calculate the 3D differences and volume changes (together with precision values) between epochs. FORSAT is a single source and flexible forest information solution, allowing expert and non-expert remote sensing users to monitor forests in three and four (time) dimensions. The geometric resolution and thematic content of VHR optical imagery are sufficient for many forest information needs such as deforestation, clear-cut and fire severity mapping. The capacity and benefits of FORSAT, as a forest information system contributing to the sustainable forest management, have been tested and validated in case studies located in Austria, Switzerland and Spain.     

An operational framework for object-based land use classification of heterogeneous rural landscapes

The characteristics of very high resolution (VHR) satellite data are encouraging development agencies to investigate its use in monitoring and evaluation programmes. VHR data pose challenges for land use classification of heterogeneous rural landscapes as it is not possible to develop generalised and transferable land use classification definitions and algorithms. We present an operational framework for classifying VHR satellite data in heterogeneous rural landscapes using an object-based and random forest classifier. The framework overcomes the challenges of classifying VHR data in anthropogenic landscapes. It does this by using an image stack of RGB-NIR, Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and textural bands in a two-phase object-based classification. The framework can be applied to data acquired by different sensors, with different view and illumination geometries, at different times of the year. Even with these complex input data the framework can produce classification results that are comparable across time. Here we describe the framework and present an example of its application using data from QuickBird (2 images) and GeoEye (1 image) sensors.     

利用多尺度Hough变换提取高分辨率SAR图像建筑物L型结构

提出了一种利用多尺度Hough变换从高分辨率SAR图像提取建筑物L型结构的方法。针对高分辨率SAR图像建筑物L型结构的特点,建立了建筑物L型结构简化几何模型,并采用从粗到精的思路利用多尺度Hough变换提取建筑物L型结构方向线。并提出了一种L型结构组合度函数对提取直线进行编组,确定建筑物L型结构的方向和拐点。最后,采用基于扫描线的方法计算L型结构线宽,得到完整规则的建筑物L型结构。多幅真实机载高分辨率SAR图像实验结果表明,本方法可以有效地提取高分辨率SAR图像建筑物L型结构,提取结果与实际位置吻合较好。     

A Bayesian characterization of urban land use configurations from VHR remote sensing images

The composition and arrangement of spatial entities, i.e., land cover objects, play a key role in distinguishing land use types from very high resolution (VHR) remote sensing images, in particular in urban environments. This paper presents a new method to characterize the spatial arrangement for urban land use extraction using VHR images. We derive an adjacency unit matrix to represent the spatial arrangement of land cover objects obtained from a VHR image, and use a graph convolutional network to quantify the spatial arrangement by extracting hidden features from adjacency unit matrices. The distribution of the spatial arrangement variables, i.e., hidden features, and the spatial composition variables, i.e., widely used land use indicators, are then estimated. We use a Bayesian method to integrate the variables of spatial arrangement and composition for urban land use extraction. Experiments were conducted using three VHR images acquired in two urban areas: a Pleiades image in Wuhan in 2013, a Superview image in Wuhan in 2019, and a GeoEye image in Oklahoma City in 2012. Our results show that the proposed method provides an effective means to characterize the spatial arrangement of land cover objects, and produces urban land use extractions with overall accuracies (i.e., 86% and 93%) higher than existing methods (i.e., 83% and 88%) that use spatial arrangement information based on building types on the Pleiades and GeoEye datasets. Moreover, it is unnecessary to further categorize the dominant land cover type into finer types for the characterization of spatial arrangement. We conclude that the proposed method has a high potential for the characterization of urban structure using different VHR images, and for the extraction of urban land use in different urban areas.     

Estimating the Numbers and the Areas of Collapsed Buildings by Combining VHR Images,Statistics and Survey Data: a Case Study of the Lushan Earthquake in China

Accurately obtaining the structures and damage types of buildings in earthquake stricken areas is fundamental to supporting rescue forces and estimating economic losses and casualties. As the stricken areas are often much larger than the areas covered by very high resolution (VHR) images, the information obtained from VHR images cannot satisfy practical needs. This study developed a method for estimating the structures and types of damaged buildings by combining VHR images, statistics and ground survey data. First, the rates of damaged buildings with different structures and damage types were manually interpreted from VHR images covering a small part of the stricken area, and further corrected by ground survey data. Second, the corrected rates were reallocated to the seismic intensity zones. Third, the rates in the seismic intensity zones and the statistical data were combined to estimate the numbers and areas of damaged buildings in villages, towns and counties. The presented method was applied to estimate the damages caused by the Lushan earthquake in China. The results indicated that our method can efficiently estimate the amount of the damages and complement existing work on only automatic extracting damaged buildings from VHR images.     

地面建筑物破坏状态检测的多类互信息量评估—震灾前光学图像与震灾后SAR图像的融合

利用震前可具备的光学图像与震后卫星SAR图像的信息融合,可检测与评估震灾区地表面建筑物破坏状态。本文根据震前光学图像的建筑物特征参数,通过SAR成像仿真算法,模拟各建筑物SAR图像,根据震后SAR真实图像与SAR仿真图像互信息量的比较,综合利用归一化互信息量、梯度互信息量、区域互信息量及检测与评估建筑物破坏状态。采用2010年海地地震灾前的IKONOS光学图像、灾后COSMO-SkyMed与RADARSAT-2的星载SAR图像,进行震后建筑物破坏状态检测与评估。其结果与震后GeoEye光学图像进行了验证,证明了本文方法的可行性。     

Quality assessment of digital surface models extracted from WorldView-2 and WorldView-3 stereo pairs over different land covers

Digital surface models (DSMs) extracted from very high resolution (VHR) satellite stereo images are becoming more and more important in a wide range of geoscience applications. The number of software packages available for generating DSMs has been increasing rapidly. The main goal of this work is to explore the capabilities of VHR satellite stereo pairs for DSMs generation over different land-cover objects such as agricultural plastic greenhouses, bare soil and urban areas by using two software packages: (i) OrthoEngine (PCI), based on a hierarchical subpixel mean normalized cross correlation matching method, and (ii) RPC Stereo Processor (RSP), with a modified hierarchical semi-global matching method. Two VHR satellite stereo pairs from WorldView-2 (WV2) and WorldView-3 (WV3) were used to extract the DSMs. A quality assessment on these DSMs on both vertical accuracy and completeness was carried out by considering the following factors: (i) type of sensor (i.e., WV2 or WV3), (ii) software package (i.e., PCI or RSP) and (iii) type of land-cover objects (plastic greenhouses, bare soil and urban areas). A highly accurate light detection and ranging (LiDAR) derived DSM was used as the ground truth for validation. By comparing both software packages, we concluded that regarding DSM completeness, RSP produced significantly (p < 0.05) better scores than PCI for all the sensors and type of land-cover objects. The percentage improvement in completeness by using RSP instead of PCI was approximately 2%, 18% and 26% for bare soil, greenhouses and urban areas respectively. Concerning the vertical accuracy in root mean square error (RMSE), the only factor clearly significant (p < 0.05) was the land cover. Overall, WV3 DSM showed slightly better (not significant) vertical accuracy values than WV2. Finally, both software packages achieved similar vertical accuracy for the different land-cover objects and tested sensors.     

2.5D change detection from satellite imagery to monitor small-scale mining activities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Mining natural resources serve fundamental societal needs or commercial interests, but it may well turn into a driver of violence and regional instability. In this study, very high resolution (VHR) optical stereo satellite data are analysed to monitor processes and changes in one of the largest artisanal and small-scale mining sites in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is among the world’s wealthiest countries in exploitable minerals To identify the subtle structural changes, the applied methodological framework employs object-based change detection (OBCD) based on optical VHR data and generated digital surface models (DSM). Results prove the DSM-based change detection approach enhances the assessment gained from sole 2D analyses by providing valuable information about changes in surface structure or volume. Land cover changes as analysed by OBCD reveal an increase in bare soil area by a rate of 47% between April 2010 and September 2010, followed by a significant decrease of 47.5% until March 2015. Beyond that, DSM differencing enabled the characterisation of small-scale features such as pits and excavations. The presented Earth observation (EO)-based monitoring of mineral exploitation aims at a better understanding of the relations between resource extraction and conflict, and thus providing relevant information for potential mitigation strategies and peace building.     

Hierarchical extraction of landslides from multiresolution remotely sensed optical images

The automated detection and mapping of landslides from Very High Resolution (VHR) images present several challenges related to the heterogeneity of landslide sizes, shapes and soil surface characteristics. However, a common geomorphological characteristic of landslides is to be organized with a series of embedded and scaled features. These properties motivated the use of a multiresolution image analysis approach for their detection. In this work, we propose a hybrid segmentation/classification region-based method, devoted to this specific issue. The method, which uses images of the same area at various spatial resolutions (Medium to Very High Resolution), relies on a recently introduced top-down hierarchical framework. In the specific context of landslide analysis, two main novelties are introduced to enrich this framework. The first novelty consists of using non-spectral information, obtained from Digital Terrain Model (DTM), as a priori knowledge for the guidance of the segmentation/classification process. The second novelty consists of using a new domain adaptation strategy, that allows to reduce the expert’s interaction when handling large image datasets. Experiments performed on satellite images acquired over terrains affected by landslides demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method with different hierarchical levels of detail addressing various operational needs.     

Advanced processing techniques for remotely sensed imagery

综述了遥感影像信息处理技术的研究进展,主要包括高分辨率影像信息提取技术、影像超分辨率、高光谱影像处理和目标探测,以及遥感影像处理与分类的人工智能方法.对于高分辨率影像处理,从纹理、形状、结构和对象的角度探讨了空间信息提取对于高分辨率影像解译的意义和作用,分析了小波纹理、空间共生纹理、形状特征提取和面向对象分类技术的进展和存在的问题;对于超分辨率技术,文章主要介绍了超分辨率技术的最新进展,及其在遥感影像(sPOT5和MODIS)中的应用;在高光谱数据处理方面,从纯净像元和混合像元两方面介绍了最新的进展.对于纯净像元方法.主要分析了植被指数和统计方法,混合像元方面,则主要分析了像元分解、端元提取的最新技术方法;在智能化信息处理方面,先回顾了神经网络和遗传算法在遥感图像处理中的应用,然后介绍了人工免疫系统对多、高光谱遥感影像分类研究的最新进展.     

变化检测技术及其在高分辨率卫星遥感影像中的应用

对高分辨率遥感卫星影像利用变化检测技术更新现有的影像数据库或地图数据库是一项对测绘具有重要意义的工作。对现有的变化检测技术进行了分类总结,然后提出了对高分辨率遥感卫星影像进行变化检测的实施流程,最后结合数学形态学算法对SPOT5影像(2.5 m分辨率)进行了相关实验。     

Contextual Analysis Based Approach for Detecting Change from High Resolution Satellite Imagery

Spatial contextual feature plays an important role in high resolution remote sensing image. A new approach based on local variance analysis is introduced to spatial contextual feature extraction for change detection in this paper. In the proposed approach, the change magnitude between the paired central pixels of a local area (e.g., a 3 × 3 sliding window) in multitemporal images depends on surrounding pixels in the difference image, and this change magnitude is quantitatively measured based on the standard deviation of the difference image within the local area. This difference image contextual property may be useful particularly when high-resolution images are used. Finally, the change magnitude image is classified as a binary CD map by using SVM. This proposed approach is applied to SPOT-5 multitemporal datasets and two QuickBird multitemporal images from two case studies, which are quantitatively compared and validated. Experimental results show that the proposed approach is feasible.     

Limitations of high resolution satellite stereo imagery for estimating canopy height in Australian tropical savannas

Obtaining reliable measures of tree canopy height across large areas is a central element of forest inventory and carbon accounting. Recent years have seen an increased emphasis on the use of active sensors like Radar and airborne LiDAR (light detection and scanning) systems to estimate various 3D characteristics of canopy and crown structure that can be used as predictors of biomass. However, airborne LiDAR data are expensive to acquire, and not often readily available across large remote landscapes. In this study, we evaluated the potential of stereo imagery from commercially available Very High Resolution (VHR) satellites as an alternative for estimating canopy height variables in Australian tropical savannas, using a semi-global dense matching (SGM) image-based technique. We assessed and compared the completeness and vertical accuracy of extracted canopy height models (CHMs) from GeoEye 1 and WorldView 1 VHR satellite stereo pairs and summarised the factors influencing image matching effectiveness and quality.Our results showed that stereo dense matching using the SGM technique severely underestimates tree presence and canopy height. The highest tree detection rates were achieved by using the near-infrared (NIR) band of GE1 (8–9%). WV1-GE1 cross-satellite (mixed) models did not improve the quality of extracted canopy heights. We consider these poor detection rates and height retrievals to result from: i) the clumping crown structure of the dominant Eucalyptus spp.; ii) their vertically oriented leaves (affecting the bidirectional reflectance distribution function); iii) image band radiometry and iv) wind induced crown movement affecting stereo-pair point matching. Our detailed analyses suggest that current commercially available VHR satellite data (0.5 m resolution) are not well suited to estimating canopy height variables, and therefore above ground biomass (AGB), in Eucalyptus dominated north Australian tropical savanna woodlands.     

Automatic change detection for road networks from images based on GIS

Up to now, detailed strategies and algorithms of automatic change detection for road networks based on GIS have not been discussed. This paper discusses two different strategies of automatic change detection for images with low resolution and high resolution using old GIS data, and presents a buffer detection and tracing algorithm for detecting road from low-resolution images and a new profile tracing algorithm for detecting road from high-resolution images. For feature-level change detection (FL-CD), a so-called buffer detection algorithm is proposed to detect changes of features. Some ideas and algorithms of using GIS prior information and some context information such as substructures of road in high-resolution images to assist road detection and extraction are described in detail.     

Automatic Change Detection for Road Networks from Images Based on GIS

Up to now, detailed strategies and algorithms of automatic change detection for road networks based on GIS have not been discussed. This paper discusses two different strategies of automatic change detection for images with low resolution and high resolution using old GIS data, and presents a buffer detection and tracing algorithm for detecting road from low-resolution images and a new profile tracing algorithm for detecting road from high-resolution images. For feature-level change detection (FL-CD), a so-called buffer detection algorithm is proposed to detect changes of features. Some ideas and algorithms of using GIS prior information and some context information such as substructures of road in high-resolution images to assist road detection and extraction are described in detail.