object-based

The urban space is the most important human-made spatial structure on the planet earth. The history of urban development shows the path of human development, political system evolution and technological, technical and industrial developments. The physical development of urban areas is one of the main drivers of global changes that have important direct and indirect effects on environmental conditions and biodiversity. In the process of physical development of the city, due to the transformation of natural and semi-natural ecosystems into impermeable surfaces, it often causes irreversible environmental changes. One of the new approaches in urban planning is the use of remote sensing techniques and geographic information system. The emergence of remote sensing and machine learning techniques offers a new and promising opportunity for accurate and efficient monitoring and analysis of urban issues in order to achieve sustainable development. The process of processing satellite images can generally be divided into two approaches: pixel-based image analysis and object-based image analysis. The pixel-based analysis technique is performed at the level of each pixel of the image and uses only the spectral information available in each pixel. On the other hand, the object-based analysis approach is performed on a homogeneous group of pixels, taking into account the spatial characteristics of the pixels. One of the basic problems in urban remote sensing is the heterogeneity of the urban physical environment. The urban environment usually includes built structures such as buildings and urban transportation networks, several different types of vegetation such as agricultural areas, gardens, as well as barren areas and water bodies. Therefore, in the pixel-based processing approach, the existence of heterogeneity in the urban biophysical environment causes spectral mixing and also spectral similarities in the classification operation of satellite images in such a way that in a place where a pixel is If the surrounding environment is different, it causes Salt and Pepper Noise. Therefore, according to the problems in the pixel-based processing approach, the aim of this research is to compare the accuracy of machine learning algorithms based on object-based processing of satellite images in extracting the physical development area of Hamedan city using Sentinel 2 satellite image.

  The remote sensing data used in this research is a multi-spectral satellite image with a spatial resolution of 10 meters from the Sentinel 2 satellite, including bands 2 (blue), 3 (green), 4 (red) and 8 (near infrared) related to the date is the 23 of August 2023 in the city of Hamadan. The image of the Sentinel 2 satellite was downloaded from the website of the European Space Agency. In ENVI software, the pre-processing operation was performed on the satellite image. Then, in the eCognition software, the segmentation process was performed based on the appropriate scale, shape factor, and compression factor with the aim of producing image objects. After segmenting and converting the image into image objects, using machine learning classifiers based on object-oriented processing of satellite images including Bayes classification algorithms, k-nearest neighbor, support vector machine, decision tree and random trees, the classification process was carried out and maps of urban physical development area were produced. After the segmentation operation and the production of visual objects, three classes of built-up urban land, vegetation and barren land were defined, and some of the built objects in the segmentation stage were selected as training points and some were selected as ground Truth points.Results & DiscussionAfter downloading the satellite image from the website of the European Space Organization, in order to apply the radiometric correction of the image and also with the aim of matching the value of the gray levels of the image with the value of the real pixels of the terrestrial reflection, the gray levels are converted to radiance and then, using atmospheric correction, to coefficients. They became terrestrial reflections. In order to apply radiometric correction, Radiometric Calibration tool was used, and to apply atmospheric correction, FLAASH model was used in ENVI software. In order to classify the satellite image based on machine learning algorithms based on object-based processing, eCognition software was used. The satellite image of the study area, which was pre-processed and saved in TIFF format, was called in the environment of this software and saved as a project. In order to produce visual objects, segmentation operations were performed in different scales, shape factor and compression ratio to reach the most appropriate segmentation mode. In this step, the multiple resolution segmentation method was used to segment the image. The most appropriate segmentation included the scale of 100 and the shape factor of 0.6 and the compression factor of 0.4. Because in scales higher than 100, the construction of the visual object was not done correctly, so that several distinct complications were placed in one piece, and in scales less than 100, in some cases, one complication was placed in several pieces. In order to classify the generated image objects, machine learning algorithms were defined separately and after training each algorithm, the classification operation was performed. In this step, the classification was done based on the nearest neighbor method and by selecting the average and standard deviation parameters for each image band. After producing a map of the city physical development range through machine learning classifiers based on object-based processing of satellite images, the classification accuracy of each of the used algorithms was calculated. In order to calculate the accuracy of the above algorithms in eCognition software, using selected ground Truth control points, the overall accuracy and kappa coefficient were calculated for each of the algorithms.

Based on the results of the research, it is possible to produce a map of Hamedan's urban physical development using machine learning algorithms based on object-based processing of satellite images with acceptable accuracy. Also, among all the algorithms used in this research, k-nearest neighbor with overall accuracy of 97% and kappa coefficient of 0.96 provided more accuracy.

By improvement of the spatial resolution of remote sensing images, more accurate information are provided from the image scene such as texture structures. However, extraction of land cover information from these datas has become a challenging process due to the high spectral diversity and the heterogeneity of surface materials. Visual interpretation is costly and time consuming and automatic interpretation of images does not necessarily lead to high accuracy. Achieving optimal interpretation accuracy requires the design of automatic algorithms that are capable of dealing with the complexity of the image scene. To overcome this problem, object-based image analysis (OBIA) that is sensitive to the image scene morphology, can be particularly effective in an urban area where the density of man-made structures is high. In object-based classification, pixels of a segment are analyzed in combination with each other. So the dimensions of the problem space are reduced, in compared to the pixel-based method, which leads to increasing the computational speed. Meanwhile, due to the different sizes of image segments, supervised object-based classification faces challenges in creating an optimal training set. In this research, AdaBoost algorithm was selected for the object-based classification, to overcome the problem of feature space imbalance, due to the small number of training samples in comparison with the high dimensions of the feature space (including spectral, spatial and geometric features), two strategies were proposed. In the first approach an active learning mechanism was integrated with AdaBoost to produce optimal training data set (OTD) and in another approach based on the feature-to-feature correlation (redundancy) and the feature-to-class correlation (relevance), the candidate feature subset (CFS) was generated to reduce the size of the feature space. To evaluate the proposed method, the developed algorithm was performed on the standard dataset of Vaihingen in Germany and the results were compared with the pixel-based classification. In order to evaluate the signification of the results, the McNemar statistical test was used. The experimental results showed that the proposed object-based approach improved the overall accuracy by 6% and the kappa coefficient by 7% compared to the pixel-based approach. Also, the computational speed of proposed object-based AdaBoost was significantly increased compared to the pixel-based approach. These results indicate the superiority of the proposed approach both in terms of accuracy and processing speed.

Landforms represent influential processes affecting features on the earth’s surface both in the past and in the present while providing important information about the characteristics and potentials of the earth. The shape of the terrain and features such as landforms affect the flow in water bodies, sediment transport, soil production, and climate at a local and regional scale. Identification and classification of landforms are among the most important purposes of geomorphological maps and also a fundamental step in the process of producing such maps. Geomorphologists have always been interested in achieving a proper and accurate classification of landforms in which their morphometric properties and construction processes are clearly indicated. The present study has attempted to develop a new method and identify the relationship between morphometry of landforms and surface processes using a multi-scale and object-based analysis. Extraction and classification of landforms are especially important in mountainous areas, which are considered to be dynamic due to their special physical and climatic conditions. These areas are often remote and sometimes unknown. Mountainous topography has also made them difficult to access. However, they are of great importance due to their impact on the macro-regional system. Because of this significant importance, Maku County was selected as the study area.

Maku County is located in northwestern Iran (West Azerbaijan Province) which borders Qarasu River and Turkey in the north, Aras River and the Republic of Azerbaijan in the east, Turkey in the west, and Shut County in the south. This County is located between 44° 17' and 44° 52' east longitude and 39° 8' and 39° 46' north latitude. The present study takes advantage of satellite images (sentinel-2A) with a spatial resolution of 10 m, derivatives of DEM layer (slope, maximum curvature, and minimum curvature, profile and plan curvature) and object-based methods to identify and extract landforms of the study area precisely. 

The present study applies various functions and capabilities of OBIA techniques to extract landforms precisely. These functions include texture features (GLCM), average bands in the image, geometric information (shape, compression, density, and asymmetry), brightness index, terrain roughness index (TRI), maximum and minimum curvature, texture, and etc. The image segmentation scale was first optimized in the present study using ESP tools and objects of the image were created on three levels (9, 17, and 27 scales). In the next step, sample landforms were introduced, membership weights were calculated and defined for the classes in accordance with the fuzzy functions, and finally, 14 types of landforms were extracted using object-oriented analysis.

Fuzzy method includes boundary conditions, defines membership function, and constantly considers landform changes in class definition. Thus, it seems to be ideal for the purpose of the present study. The present study used two types of data (data derived from satellite imagery and DEM layer) along with OBIA approach to extract landforms. Classification of landforms based on fuzzy theory makes it possible to collect more comprehensive information from the earth's surface. Results indicate that fuzzy object-based method has classified landforms with an accuracy of 87% and a kappa index of 85%. Considering the resolution of the images applied in the present study, all features were extracted with an acceptable accuracy except for debris. This can be attributed to the fact that debris is usually accumulated in a small area on steep mountainsides, and thus remains hidden from satellites in nadir images. OBIA approach shows a high efficiency because it can combine spectral characteristics of various types of data (i.e. images and DEM data) and their derivatives while analyzing the shape of the segment, and size, texture and spatial distribution of segments based on their class and other neighboring segments.

Land cover information is one of the most important prerequisite in urban management system. In this way remote sensing, as the most economic technology, is mainly used to produce land cover maps. Considering the complicated and dense urban areas in third world countries, object based approaches are suggested as an effective image processing technique. The purpose of this paper are the introduction of a new object based approach for classification of complicated urban area using high resolution satellite image and approaching to a standard and effective process of map generation by satellite images. This paper used a new approach to select the segmentation parameters and a new hierarchical classification model based on a rule based strategy is used to overcome the confusions between urban classes too. In this article an innovative hierarchical model is proposed for object-based classification of complicated urban areas. In this way, beside of feature space optimization in a multi scale analysis, rule based and fuzzy nearest neighbor approaches are used as the object-based classification strategies. The proposed method is implemented on an urban IKONOS image where 84% and 87%overall accuracies are obtained for rule based and fuzzy nearest neighbor classification approaches respectively. The implementation of the devised algorithm on another IKONOS image moved its general ability to other urban areas.