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Pansharpening has proven to be a valuable method for resolution enhancement of multi-band images when spatially high-resolving panchromatic images are available in addition. In principle, pansharpening can beneficially be applied to hyperspectral images as well. But whereas the grey values of multi-spectral images comprise at most relative information about the registered intensities, calibrated hyperspectral images are supposed to provide absolute reflectivity values of the respective material surfaces. This physical significance of the hyperspectral data should be preserved within the pansharpening process as much as possible. In this paper we compare several common pansharpening methods such as Principal Component Fusion, Wavelet Fusion, Gram-Schmidt transform and investigate their applicability for hyperspectral data. Our focus is on the impact of the pansharpening on material classifications. Apart from applying common quality measures, we compare the results of material classifications from hyperspectral data, which were pansharpened by different methods. In addition we propose an alternative pansharpening method which is based on an initial segmentation of the panchromatic image with an additional use of map vector data.

Mapping of surface materials in urban areas using aerial imagery is a challenging task. This is because there are numerous materials present in relatively small regions. Hyperspectral data features a fine spectral resolution and thus has a significant capability for automatic identification and mapping of urban surface materials. In this study an approach for identification of roof surface materials using hyperspectral data is presented. The study is based on an urban area in Ludwigsburg, Germany, using a HyMap data set recorded during the HyMap campaign in August, 2010. Automatisierte Liegenschaftskarte (ALK) vector data with a building layer is combined with the HyMap data to limit the analysis to roofs. A spectral library for roofs is compiled based on field and image measurements. In the roof material identification process, supervised classification methods, namely spectral angle mapper and spectral information divergence and the object oriented ECHO (extraction and classification of homogeneous objects) approach are compared. In addition to the overall shape of spectral curves, position and strength of absorptions features are used to enhance material identification. The discriminant analysis feature extraction method is applied to the HyMap data in order to identify features (band combinations) suitable for discriminating between the target classes. The identified optimal features are used to create a new data set which is later classified using the ECHO classifier. The classification results with respect to material types of roofs are presented in this study. The most important results are evaluated using orthophotos, probability maps and field visits.