Delineation of groundwater potential zones using remote sensing and GIS-based data-driven models

The rapid increase in human population has increased the groundwater resources demand for drinking, agricultural and industrial purposes. The main purpose of this study is to produce groundwater potential map (GPM) using weights-of-evidence (WOE) and evidential belief function (EBF) models based on geographic information system in the Azna Plain, Lorestan Province, Iran. A total number of 370 groundwater wells with discharge more than 10 m³s^?1were considered and out of them, 256 (70%) were randomly selected for training purpose, while the remaining114 (30%) were used for validating the model. In next step, the effective factors on the groundwater potential such as altitude, slope aspect, slope angle, curvature, distance from rivers, drainage density, topographic wetness index, fault distance, fault density, lithology and land use were derived from the spatial geodatabases. Subsequently, the GPM was produced using WOE and EBF models. Finally, the validation of the GPMs was carried out using areas under the ROC curve (AUC). Results showed that the GPM prepared using WOE model has the success rate of 73.62%. Similarly, the AUC plot showed 76.21% prediction accuracy for the EBF model which means both the models performed fairly good predication accuracy. The GPMs are useful sources for planners and engineers in water resource management, land use planning and hazard mitigation purpose.     

A comparative analysis of pansharpening techniques on QuickBird and WorldView-3 images

Nowadays, different image pansharpening methods are available, which combine the strengths of different satellite images that have different spectral and spatial resolutions. These different image fusion methods, however, add spectral and spatial distortions to the resultant images depending on the required context. Therefore, a careful selection of the fusion method is required. Simultaneously, it is also essential that the fusion technique should be efficient to cope with the large data. In this paper, we investigated how different pansharpening algorithms perform, when applied to very high-resolution WorldView-3 and QuickBird satellite images effectively and efficiently. We compared these 27 pansharpening techniques in terms of quantitative analysis, visual inspection and computational complexity, which has not previously been formally tested. In addition, 12 different image quality metrics available in literature are used for quantitative analysis purpose.     

Total evaporation estimation for accurate water accounting purposes: an appraisal of various available estimation methods

The estimation of total evaporation is fundamental for water accounting, considering its influence on water availability. Moreover, the current increase in water consumption (e.g. in sub-Saharan Africa and the world over), land cover/use changes, deteriorating water quality and the climate change projections in most regions of the world underscore the need to understand water loss. So far, different approaches have been developed and implemented in estimating the variations of total evaporation, with varying accuracies. The aim of this work was therefore, to provide a review of these different approaches for estimating total evaporation, as well as a detailed discussion of their strengths and weaknesses. Findings from this review have shown that total evaporation estimates derived, using ground-based meteorological and micro-meteorological methods are inadequate for representing its large-scale spatial variations. On the other hand, remote sensing technology, which acquires data at different resolutions (i.e. radiometric, spectral, spatial and temporal), provides timely, up-to-date and relatively accurate spatial estimates of total evaporation over large geographic coverage, for sustainable and effective water accounting, which is key for well-informed and improved management of water resources at both catchment and regional scales. In this regard, more details on the remote sensing-based methods of estimating total evaporation are provided, especially considering the robust technological advancements and its potential in characterizing earth features over time and space. This work has also managed to identify research gaps and challenges in the accurate estimation of total evaporation, using remote sensing, especially with the emergence of more advanced sensors and the characteristics of the landscape.     

Road condition assessment by OBIA and feature selection techniques using very high-resolution WorldView-2 imagery

Accurate information on the conditions of road asphalt is necessary for economic development and transportation management. In this study, object-based image analysis (OBIA) rule-sets are proposed based on feature selection technique to extract road asphalt conditions (good and poor) using WorldView-2 (WV-2) satellite data. Different feature selection techniques, including support vector machine (SVM), random forest (RF) and chi-square (CHI) are evaluated to indicate the most effective algorithm to identify the best set of OBIA attributes (spatial, spectral, textural and colour). The chi-square algorithm outperformed SVM and RF techniques. The classification result based on CHI algorithm achieved an overall accuracy of 83.19% for the training image (first site). Furthermore, the proposed model was used to examine its performance in different areas; and it achieved accuracy levels of 83.44, 87.80 and 80.26% for the different selected areas. Therefore, the selected method can be potentially useful for detecting road conditions based on WV-2 images.     

Analysis of urban built-up areas and surface urban heat island using downscaled MODIS derived land surface temperature data

Regional scale urban built-up areas and surface urban heat islands (SUHI) are important for urban planning and policy formation. Owing to coarse spatial resolution (1000 m), it is difficult to use Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Land surface temperature (LST) products for mapping urban areas and visualization, and SUHI-related studies. To overcome this problem, the present study downscaled MODIS (1000 m resolution)-derived LST to 250 m resolution to map and visualize the urban areas and identify the basic components of SUHI over 12 districts of Punjab, India. The results are compared through visual interpretation and statistical procedure based on similarity analysis. The increased entropy value in the downscaled LST signifies higher information content. The temperature variation within the built-up and its environs is due to difference in land use and is depicted better in the downscaled LST. The SUHI intensity analysis of four cities (Ludhiana, Patiala, Moga and Vatinda) indicates that mean temperature in urban built-up core is higher (38.87 °C) as compared to suburban (35.85 °C) and rural (32.41 °C) areas. The downscaling techniques demonstrated in this paper enhance the usage of open-source wide swath MODIS LST for continuous monitoring of SUHI and urban area mapping, visualisation and analysis at regional scale. Such initiatives are useful for the scientific community and the decision-makers.     

Monitoring canopy growth and grain yield of paddy rice in South Korea by using the GRAMI model and high spatial resolution imagery

Monitoring crop conditions and forecasting crop yields are both important for assessing crop production and for determining appropriate agricultural management practices; however, remote sensing is limited by the resolution, timing, and coverage of satellite images, and crop modeling is limited in its application at regional scales. To resolve these issues, the Gramineae (GRAMI)-rice model, which utilizes remote sensing data, was used in an effort to combine the complementary techniques of remote sensing and crop modeling. The model was then investigated for its capability to monitor canopy growth and estimate the grain yield of rice (Oryza sativa), at both the field and the regional scales, by using remote sensing images with high spatial resolution. The field scale investigation was performed using unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) images, and the regional-scale investigation was performed using RapidEye satellite images. Simulated grain yields at the field scale were not significantly different (p = 0.45, p = 0.27, and p = 0.52) from the corresponding measured grain yields according to paired t-tests (α = 0.05). The model’s projections of grain yield at the regional scale represented the spatial grain yield variation of the corresponding field conditions to within ±1 standard deviation. Therefore, based on mapping the growth and grain yield of rice at both field and regional scales of interest within coverages of a UAV or the RapidEye satellite, our results demonstrate the applicability of the GRAMI-rice model to the monitoring and prediction of rice growth and grain yield at different spatial scales. In addition, the GRAMI-rice model is capable of reproducing seasonal variations in rice growth and grain yield at different spatial scales.     

Multi‐scale approach to mining significant spatial co‐location patterns

Spatial co‐location pattern mining aims to discover a collection of Boolean spatial features, which are frequently located in close geographic proximity to each other. Existing methods for identifying spatial co‐location patterns usually require users to specify two thresholds, i.e. the prevalence threshold for measuring the prevalence of candidate co‐location patterns and distance threshold to search the spatial co‐location patterns. However, these two thresholds are difficult to determine in practice, and improper thresholds may lead to the misidentification of useful patterns and the incorrect reporting of meaningless patterns. The multi‐scale approach proposed in this study overcomes this limitation. Initially, the prevalence of candidate co‐location patterns is measured statistically by using a significance test, and a non‐parametric model is developed to construct the null distribution of features with the consideration of spatial auto‐correlation. Next, the spatial co‐location patterns are explored at multi‐scales instead of single scale (or distance threshold) discovery. The validity of the co‐location patterns is evaluated based on the concept of lifetime. Experiments on both synthetic and ecological datasets show that spatial co‐location patterns are discovered correctly and completely by using the proposed method; on the other hand, the subjectivity in discovery of spatial co‐location patterns is reduced significantly.     

利用自然语言空间关系的空间查询方法研究

首先,从空间认知语言学的角度研究了空间关系自然语言描述中谓词、量词等的分类方法;然后,在分析空间查询语言特点的基础上建立了自然语言空间查询的4类句法模式;最后,设计了一个基于自然语言空间关系的空间查询系统框架,并进行了初步实现。     

利用多分类器集成进行遥感影像分类

基于信息相关理论,根据相关度值动态调整分类器的组合和权重,建立了新型的多分类器集成规则,并应用于决策树分类器、BP人工神经网络分类器和SVM分类器的集成。通过对长沙城区TM影像的分类实验发现:①三种分类器的分类结果存在较明显的差异,水体区的差异像元最少,占水体总像元的15.12%,建设用地区的差异像元最多,占建设用地区像元的54.93%;②三种分类器均具有较高的分类精度,总体精度均超过了74%,而且分类器各有优势,决策树分类器能够较好地分出水体和建设用地,BP分类器能够较好地分出水体和林地,SVM分类器对水体、林地和建设用地均有较高的分类精度;③基于全信息相关度的多分类器集成分类法明显地提升了分类结果的精度,分类精度达到了85.71%,Kappa系数达到了80.56%。     

视觉皮层振荡神经网络在遥感影像分割中的应用

对于具有复杂场景的遥感影像,提出了基于各向异性扩散特征保持平滑的简化LEGION算法,弥补传统LEGION图像分割算法对噪声敏感的不足。对于多(高)光谱影像,则采用马氏距离计算光谱向量间的连接权得到扩展LEGION算法进行分割。实验结果表明,LEGION算法较传统的图像分割方法对单波段灰度遥感影像目标及其重要细节部分的分割效果更显著;扩展LEGION算法适用于多光谱遥感影像分割。