Producing land use/cover maps with the integration of remote sensing and ancillary data in a GIS environment

Abstract

The main purpose of the research presented in this paper is the development and validation, through the application to a case study, of an efficient form of satellite image classification that integrates ancillary information (Census data; the Municipal Master Plan; the Road Network) and remote sensing data in a Geographic Information System. The developed procedure follows a layered classification approach, being composed by three main stages: 1) Preclassification stratification; 2) Application of Bayesian and Maximum-likelihood classifiers; 3) Post-classification sorting. Common approaches incorporate the ancillary data before, during or after classification. In the proposed method, all the steps take the auxiliary information into account. The proposed method achieves, globally, much better classification results than the classical, one layer, Minimum Distance and Maximum- likelihood classifiers. Also, it greatly improves the accuracy of those classes where the classification process uses the ancillary data.