Land Cover Classification at the Wildland Urban Interface using High-Resolution Satellite Imagery and Deep Learning

Urban land cover and land use mapping plays an important role in urban planning and management. In this paper, novel multi-scale deep learning models, namely ASPP-Unet and ResASPP-Unet are proposed for urban land cover classification based on very high resolution (VHR) satellite imagery. The proposed ASPP-Unet model consists of a contracting path which extracts the high-level features, and an expansive path, which up-samples the features to create a high-resolution output. The atrous spatial pyramid pooling (ASPP) technique is utilized in the bottom layer in order to incorporate multi-scale deep features into a discriminative feature. The ResASPP-Unet model further improves the architecture by replacing each layer with residual unit. The models were trained and tested based on WorldView-2 (WV2) and WorldView-3 (WV3) imageries over the city of Beijing. Model parameters including layer depth and the number of initial feature maps (IFMs) as well as the input image bands were evaluated in terms of their impact on the model performances. It is shown that the ResASPP-Unet model with 11 layers and 64 IFMs based on 8-band WV2 imagery produced the highest classification accuracy (87.1% for WV2 imagery and 84.0% for WV3 imagery). The ASPP-Unet model with the same parameter setting produced slightly lower accuracy, with overall accuracy of 85.2% for WV2 imagery and 83.2% for WV3 imagery. Overall, the proposed models outperformed the state-of-the-art models, e.g., U-Net, convolutional neural network (CNN) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) model over both WV2 and WV3 images, and yielded robust and efficient urban land cover classification results.

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Using machine learning to produce a very high-resolution land-cover map for Ireland and beyond

10.5194/ems2021-53 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Geoffrey Bessardon ◽

Emily Gleeson ◽

Eoin Walsh

Keyword(s):

Machine Learning ◽

High Resolution ◽

Land Cover ◽

Satellite Imagery ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Weather Forecasting ◽

Land Cover Classification ◽

Surface Processes ◽

Land Cover Map ◽

Very High

An accurate representation of surface processes is essential for weather forecasting as it is where most of the thermal, turbulent and humidity exchanges occur. The Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) system, to represent these exchanges, requires a land-cover classification map to calculate the surface parameters used in the turbulent, radiative, heat, and moisture fluxes estimations.The land-cover classification map used in the HARMONIE-AROME configuration of the shared ALADIN-HIRLAM NWP system for operational weather forecasting is ECOCLIMAP. ECOCLIMAP-SG (ECO-SG), the latest version of ECOCLIMAP, was evaluated over Ireland to prepare ECO-SG implementation in HARMONIE-AROME. This evaluation suggested that sparse urban areas are underestimated and instead appear as vegetation areas in ECO-SG [1], with an over-classification of grassland in place of sparse urban areas and other vegetation covers (Met &#201;ireann internal communication). Some limitations in the performance of the current HARMONIE-AROME configuration attributed to surface processes and physiography issues are well-known [2]. This motivated work at Met &#201;ireann to evaluate solutions to improve the land-cover map in HARMONIE-AROME.In terms of accuracy, resolution, and the future production of time-varying land-cover map, the use of a convolutional neural network (CNN) to create a land-cover map using Sentinel-2 satellite imagery [3] over Estonia [4] presented better potential outcomes than the use of local datasets [5]. Consequently, this method was tested over Ireland and proven to be more accurate than ECO-SG for representing CORINE Primary and Secondary labels and at a higher resolution [5]. This work is a continuity of [5] focusing on 1. increasing the number of labels, 2. optimising the training procedure, 3. expanding the method for application to other HIRLAM countries and 4. implementation of the new land-cover map in HARMONIE-AROME.&#160;[1] Bessardon, G., Gleeson, E., (2019) Using the best available physiography to improve weather forecasts for Ireland. In EMS Annual Meeting.Retrieved fromhttps://presentations.copernicus.org/EMS2019-702_presentation.pdf[2] Bengtsson, L., Andrae, U., Aspelien, T., Batrak, Y., Calvo, J., de Rooy, W.,. . . K&#248;ltzow, M. &#216;. (2017). The HARMONIE&#8211;AROME Model Configurationin the ALADIN&#8211;HIRLAM NWP System. Monthly Weather Review, 145(5),1919&#8211;1935.https://doi.org/10.1175/mwr-d-16-0417.1[3] Bertini, F., Brand, O., Carlier, S., Del Bello, U., Drusch, M., Duca, R., Fernandez, V., Ferrario, C., Ferreira, M., Isola, C., Kirschner, V.,Laberinti, P., Lambert, M., Mandorlo, G., Marcos, P., Martimort, P., Moon, S., Oldeman,P., Palomba, M., and Pineiro, J.: Sentinel-2ESA&#8217;s Optical High-ResolutionMission for GMES Operational Services, ESA bulletin. Bulletin ASE. Euro-pean Space Agency, SP-1322,2012[4] Ulmas, P. and Liiv, I. (2020). Segmentation of Satellite Imagery using U-Net Models for Land Cover Classification, pp. 1&#8211;11,http://arxiv.org/abs/2003.02899, 2020[5] Walsh, E., Bessardon, G., Gleeson, E., and Ulmas, P. (2021). Using machine learning to produce a very high-resolution land-cover map for Ireland. Advances in Science and Research, (accepted for publication)

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A new approach for oil tank detection using deep learning features with control false alarm rate in high-resolution satellite imagery

International Journal of Remote Sensing ◽

10.1080/01431161.2019.1685720 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 41 (6) ◽

pp. 2239-2262 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Moein Zalpour ◽

Gholamreza Akbarizadeh ◽

Navid Alaei-Sheini

Keyword(s):

Deep Learning ◽

High Resolution ◽

False Alarm ◽

False Alarm Rate ◽

Satellite Imagery ◽

New Approach ◽

Deep Learning Features ◽

Oil Tank ◽

High Resolution Satellite Imagery

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Detection of Tailings Dams Using High-Resolution Satellite Imagery and a Single Shot Multibox Detector in the Jing–Jin–Ji Region, China

Remote Sensing ◽

10.3390/rs12162626 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 12 (16) ◽

pp. 2626 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Qingting Li ◽

Zhengchao Chen ◽

Bing Zhang ◽

Baipeng Li ◽

Kaixuan Lu ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Remote Sensing ◽

Deep Learning ◽

High Resolution ◽

Satellite Imagery ◽

Spatial Scales ◽

Detection Accuracy ◽

Single Shot ◽

Tailings Dams ◽

High Resolution Satellite Imagery ◽

Tailings Ponds

The timely and accurate mapping and monitoring of mine tailings dams is crucial to the improvement of management practices by decision makers and to the prevention of disasters caused by failures of these dams. Due to the complex topography, varying geomorphological characteristics, and the diversity of ore types and mining activities, as well as the range of scales and production processes involved, as they appear in remote sensing imagery, tailings dams vary in terms of their scale, color, shape, and surrounding background. The application of high-resolution satellite imagery for automatic detection of tailings dams at large spatial scales has been barely reported. In this study, a target detection method based on deep learning was developed for identifying the locations of tailings ponds and obtaining their geographical distribution from high-resolution satellite imagery automatically. Training samples were produced based on the characteristics of tailings ponds in satellite images. According to the sample characteristics, the Single Shot Multibox Detector (SSD) model was fine-tuned during model training. The results showed that a detection accuracy of 90.2% and a recall rate of 88.7% could be obtained. Based on the optimized SSD model, 2221 tailing ponds were extracted from Gaofen-1 high resolution imagery in the Jing–Jin–Ji region in northern China. In this region, the majority of tailings ponds are located at high altitudes in remote mountainous areas. At the city level, the tailings ponds were found to be located mainly in Chengde, Tangshan, and Zhangjiakou. The results prove that the deep learning method is very effective at detecting complex land-cover features from remote sensing images.

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