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This study addresses the potential of geospatial information extraction by using light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data and aerial optical images in an urban landscape. We have adopted an advanced geographic object-based image analysis (GEOBIA) technique consisting of rule-based procedures relying upon the integration of spectral, textural, and spatial characteristics of aerial imagery and roughness of point cloud of LiDAR to fuse aerial imagery and airborne LiDAR for effective urban geospatial information extraction. This study is focused on the extraction of four tangible geospatial features, e.g., buildings, trees, marine vessels, and cars. LiDAR-derived normalized digital surface model (nDSM) was insufficient in delineating the polygon features because of the sparse point cloud density at the edges of features, which greatly affected the accuracy of extracting the polygon features. Therefore aerial imagery was supplemented in order to enhance the quality of extraction. The final feature extraction accuracy was assessed against manual digitization by visual interpretation, statistical analysis, and confusion matrix. The accuracy of feature extraction was found to be ranging from 90 to 95%. The accuracy of buildings class was improved using intensity image generated from LiDAR data and Hough image along with morphological operations. In a nutshell, this study highlights robust improvements in the geospatial extraction of urban features by merging more than one dataset synergistically.

Water on the Earth’s surface is an essential part of the hydrological cycle. Water resources include surface waters, groundwater, lakes, inland waters, rivers, coastal waters, and aquifers. Monitoring lake dynamics is critical to favor sustainable management of water resources on Earth. In cryosphere, lake ice cover is a robust indicator of local climate variability and change. Therefore, it is necessary to review recent methods, technologies, and satellite sensors employed for the extraction of lakes from satellite imagery. The present review focuses on the comprehensive evaluation of existing methods for extraction of lake or water body features from remotely sensed optical data. We summarize pixel-based, object-based, hybrid, spectral index based, target and spectral matching methods employed in extracting lake features in urban and cryospheric environments. To our knowledge, almost all of the published research studies on the extraction of surface lakes in cryospheric environments have essentially used satellite remote sensing data and geospatial methods. Satellite sensors of varying spatial, temporal and spectral resolutions have been used to extract and analyze the information regarding surface water. Multispectral remote sensing has been widely utilized in cryospheric studies and has employed a variety of electro-optical satellite sensor systems for characterization and extraction of various cryospheric features, such as glaciers, sea ice, lakes and rivers, the extent of snow and ice, and icebergs. It is apparent that the most common methods for extracting water bodies use single band-based threshold methods, spectral index ratio (SIR)-based multiband methods, image segmentation methods, spectral-matching methods, and target detection methods (unsupervised, supervised and hybrid). A Synergetic fusion of various remote sensing methods is also proposed to improve water information extraction accuracies. The methods developed so far are not generic rather they are specific to either the location or satellite imagery or to the type of the feature to be extracted. Lots of factors are responsible for leading to inaccurate results of lake-feature extraction in cryospheric regions, e.g. the mountain shadow which also appears as a dark pixel is often misclassified as an open lake. The methods which are working well in the cryospheric environment for feature extraction or landcover classification does not really guarantee that they will be working in the same manner for the urban environment. Thus, in coming years, it is expected that much of the work will be done on object-based approach or hybrid approach involving both pixel as well as object-based technology. A more accurate, versatile and robust method is necessary to be developed that would work independent of geographical location (for both urban and cryosphere) and type of optical sensor.

Image classification is one of the most basic operations of digital image processing. The present review focuses on the strengths and weaknesses of traditional pixel-based classification (PBC) and the advances of object-oriented classification (OOC) algorithms employed for the extraction of information from remotely sensed satellite imageries. The state-of-the-art classifiers are reviewed for their potential usage in urban remote sensing (RS), with a special focus on cryospheric applications. Generally, classifiers for information extraction can be divided into three catalogues: 1) based on the type of learning (supervised and unsupervised), 2) based on assumptions on data distribution (parametric and non-parametric) and, 3) based on the number of outputs for each spatial unit (hard and soft). The classification methods are broadly based on the PBC or the OOC approaches. Both methods have their own advantages and disadvantages depending upon their area of application and most importantly the RS datasets that are used for information extraction. Classification algorithms are variedly explored in the cryosphere for extracting geospatial information for various logistic and scientific applications, such as to understand temporal changes in geographical phenomena. Information extraction in cryospheric regions is challenging, accounting to the very similar and conflicting spectral responses of the features present in the region. The spectral responses of snow and ice, water, and blue ice, rock and shadow are a big challenge for the pixel-based classifiers. Thus, in such cases, OOC approach is superior for extracting information from the cryospheric regions. Also, ensemble classifiers and customized spectral index ratios (CSIR) proved extremely good approaches for information extraction from cryospheric regions. The present review would be beneficial for developing new classifiers in the cryospheric environment for better understanding of spatial-temporal changes over long time scales.

This work uses the canopy height model (CHM) based workflow for individual tree crown delineation from LiDAR point cloud data in an urban environment and evaluates its accuracy by using very high-resolution PAN (spatial) and 8-band WorldView-2 imagery. LiDAR point cloud data were used to detect tree features by classifying point elevation values. The workflow includes resampling of LiDAR point cloud to generate a raster surface or digital terrain model, generation of hill-shade image and intensity image, extraction of digital surface model, generation of bare earth digital elevation model and extraction of tree features. Scene dependent extraction criteria were employed to improve the tree feature extraction. LiDAR-based refining/filtering techniques used for bare earth layer extraction were crucial for improving the subsequent tree feature extraction. The PAN-sharpened WV-2 image (with 0.5 m spatial resolution) used to assess the accuracy of LiDAR-based tree features provided an accuracy of 98%. Based on these inferences, we conclude that the LiDAR-based tree feature extraction is a potential application which can be used for understanding vegetation characterization in urban setup.

A robust monitoring of the changes in the distribution and density of cryospheric plant species requires accurate and high-resolution baseline maps of vegetation. Mapping such change at the landscape scale is often problematic, particularly in remote areas, such as Antarctica. Vegetation mapping of plant communities at fine spatial scales is increasingly supported by remote sensing technology in cryospheric regions. Less frequent imaging with high spatial resolution satellite sensors enable more detailed analyses of vegetation change frequently. This study is the first to use high-resolution WorldView-2 (WV-2) imagery to classify vegetation communities on Antarctic oases and to provide semi-automated means to map vegetation, as an imperative indicator for environmental change. Multispectral imagery (MSI) and panchromatic imagery (PAN) from very high resolution WV-2 have been used for mapping of vegetation in different forms in Antarctic environment. A range of supervised classification methods have been executed using pan-sharpened WV-2 data. This study comparatively and statistically evaluates vegetation mapping results using supervised and unsupervised classification methods to extract vegetation in Larsemann Hills and Schirmacher oasis, east Antarctica. We also discuss on the use of supervised pixel-based classifiers and textural measures, in addition to standard multispectral information, to improve the classification of Antarctic vegetation communities. Classification results were validated with independent reference datasets. This work indicates that the overall accuracy of mapping vegetation using WV-2 imagery and semi-automated target extraction methods ranged from 90% to 94%.

Current research study emphasizes the importance of advanced digital image processing methods in order to delineate between various LULC features. In the case of the Antarctica, the present LC (snow/ice, landmass, water, vegetation etc.) and the present LU (research stations of various nations) needs to be mapped accurately for the hassle free routine activities. Geo-location has become the most important part of geosciences studies. In this paper we have tried to locate three most important features (snow/ice, landmass, and water) and also have extracted the extent of the same using the multisource classification (image fusion/pansharpening) and pattern recognition (supervised/unsupervised methods, index ratio methods). Innovation in developing spectral index ratios has led us to come up with an unique ratio named Normalized Difference Landmass Index (NDLI) which performed better (Avg. Bias: 51.99m) than other ratios such as Normalized Difference Snow/Ice Index (NDSII) (Avg. Bias: -1572.11m) and Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) (Avg. Bias: 1886.60m). The practiced trial and error methodology quantifies the productivity of not only the classification methods over one other but also that of the fusion methods. In present study, classifiers used (Mahalanobis and Winner Takes All) performed better (Avg. Bias: 122.16 m) than spectral index ratios (Avg. Bias: 620.16 m). The study also revealed that newly introduced bands in WorldView-2, band 1 (Coastal Blue), 4 (Yellow), 6 (Red-edge) and 8 (Near Infrared-2) along with traditional bands have the capacity to mine the polar geospatial information with utmost accuracy and efficiency.

An accurate spatial mapping and characterization of land cover features in cryospheric regions is an essential procedure for many geoscientific studies. A novel semi-automated method was devised by coupling spectral index ratios (SIRs) and geographic object-based image analysis (OBIA) to extract cryospheric geospatial information from very high resolution WorldView 2 (WV-2) satellite imagery. The present study addresses development of multiple rule sets for OBIA-based classification of WV-2 imagery to accurately extract land cover features in the Larsemann Hills, east Antarctica. Multilevel segmentation process was applied to WV-2 image to generate different sizes of geographic image objects corresponding to various land cover features with respect to scale parameter. Several SIRs were applied to geographic objects at different segmentation levels to classify land mass, man-made features, snow/ice, and water bodies. We focus on water body class to identify water areas at the image level, considering their uneven appearance on landmass and ice. The results illustrated that synergetic usage of SIRs and OBIA can provide accurate means to identify land cover classes with an overall classification accuracy of ≈97%. In conclusion, our results suggest that OBIA is a powerful tool for carrying out automatic and semiautomatic analysis for most cryospheric remote-sensing applications, and the synergetic coupling with pixel-based SIRs is found to be a superior method for mining geospatial information.

Here, we discuss the improvements in urban classification that were made using the spatial-spectral-angular information from a WorldView-2 (WV-2) multiangle image sequence. In this study, we evaluate the use of multiangle high resolution WV-2 panchromatic (PAN) and multispectral image (MSI) data for extracting urban geospatial information. Current multiangular WV-2 data were classified into misclassification-prone surfaces, such as vegetation, water bodies, and man-made features, using a cluster of normalized difference spectral index ratios (SIR). A novel multifold methodology protocol was designed to estimate the consequences of multiangularity and germane PAN-sharpening algorithms on the spectral characteristics (distortions) of satellite data and on the resulting land use/land cover (LU/LC) mapping using an array of SIRs. Eight existing PAN-sharpening algorithms were used for data fusion, followed by estimation of multiple SIRs to mitigate spectral distortions arising from the multiangularity of the data. This research highlights the benefits of using traditional PAN-sharpening techniques with a specific set of SIRs on land cover mapping based on five available tiles of satellite data. The research provides a method to overcome the atmospherically triggered spectral distortions of multiangular acquisitions, which will facilitate better mapping and understanding of the earth’s surface.

This study evaluates the potential of 8-band high resolution WorldView-2 (WV-2) panchromatic (PAN) and multispectral image (MSI) data for the extraction of polar geospatial information. We introduce a novel method based on a customized set of normalized difference Spectral Index Ratios (SIRs), incorporating multiple bands, to improve the accuracy of land-cover mapping in the Antarctic. Most recently available WV-2 data are classified into land-cover surfaces such as snow/ice, water bodies, and landmass using the customized normalized difference SIRs. A novel multi-fold methodology is used to evaluate the effect of pan-sharpening algorithms on spectral characteristics of satellite data, and on subsequent land-cover mapping using an array of SIRs. A set of existing pan-sharpening algorithms was implemented in order to fuse PAN with MSI data, followed by estimation of multiple SIRs to extract target land-cover classes. These algorithms were compared on the basis of their effectiveness in extracting target classes using a defined set of SIRs. Our results indicate that the use of 8-band WV-2, customized SIRs, and appropriate pan-sharpening can greatly improve the extraction of land-cover information.