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Urban morphology is characterized by a complex and variable coexistence of diverse, spatially and spectrally heterogeneous objects. Built-up areas are among the most rapidly changing and expanding elements of the landscape. Thus, remote sensing becomes an essential field for up-to-date and area-wide data acquisition, especially in explosively sprawling cities of developing countries. The urban heterogeneity requires high spatial resolution image data for an accurate geometric differentiation of the small-scale physical features. This study proposes an object-based, multi-level, hierarchical classification framework combining shape, spectral, hierarchical and contextual information for the extraction of urban features. The particular focus is on high class accuracies and stable transferability by fast and easy adjustments on varying urban structures or sensor characteristics. The framework is based on a modular concept following a chronological workflow from a bottom-up segmentation optimization to a hierarchical, fuzzy-based decision fusion top-down classification. The workflow has been developed on IKONOS data for the megacity Istanbul, Turkey. Transferability is tested based on Quickbird data from the various urban structures of the incipient megacity Hyderabad, India. The validation of both land-cover classifications shows an overall accuracy of more than 81 percent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

City morphology not only reveals spatial distribution of diverse physical parameters but also of diverse socio-economic characteristics. Because of this, spatial structure or zoning in urban spaces is a key variable for inferring information valuable for assessment, planning, and management purposes. The presented methodology shows a mathematical approach to derive homogeneous zones from a solely remote sensing land-cover classification result. By Savitzky-Golay filtering and a subsequent curve-sketching approach, an interpreter-independent differentiation within a city is computed. The classification shows the result of the arrangement of urban zoning without any ancillary data [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With 37 million inhabitants, Tokyo is the world's largest city in UN statistics. With this work we call this ranking into question. Usually, global city rankings are based on nationally collected population figures, which rely on administrative units. Sprawling urban growth, however, leads to morphological city extents that may surpass conventional administrative units. In order to detect spatial discrepancies between the physical and the administrative city, we present a methodology for delimiting Morphological Urban Areas (MUAs). We understand MUAs as a territorially contiguous settlement area that can be distinguished from low-density peripheral and rural hinterlands. We design a settlement index composed of three indicators (settlement area, settlement area proportion and density within the settlements) describing a gradient of built-up density from the urban center to the periphery applying a sectoral monocentric city model. We assume that the urban-rural transition can be defined along this gradient. With it, we re-territorialize the conventional administrative units. Our data basis are recent mapping products derived from multi-sensoral Earth observation (EO) data – namely the Global Urban Footprint (GUF) and the GUF Density (GUF-DenS) – providing globally consistent knowledge about settlement locations and densities. For the re-territorialized MUAs we calculate population numbers using WorldPop data. Overall, we cover the 1692 cities with >300,000 inhabitants on our planet. In our results we compare the consistently re-territorialized MUAs and the administrative units as well as their related population figures. We find the MUA in the Pearl River Delta the largest morphologically contiguous urban agglomeration in the world with a calculated population of 42.6 million. Tokyo, in this new list ranked number 2, loses its top position. In rank-size distributions we present the resulting deviations from previous city rankings. Although many MUAs outperform administrative units by area, we find that, contrary to what we assumed, in most cases MUAs are considerably smaller than administrative units. Only in Europe we find MUAs largely outweighing administrative units in extent. • A globally consistent calculation of morphological city extents • New ranking of city sizes based on extents and population compared to admin units • Identification of the Pearl River Delta as the largest agglomeration in the world • Morphological city extents are, contrary to expectations, smaller than admin units • In Western Europe, however, we mainly reveal larger city extents than admin units [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]