Multitemporal quality assessment of grassland and cropland objects of a topographic dataset

Abstract

As a consequence of the wide-spread application of digital geo-data in geographic information systems (GIS), quality control has become increasingly important to enhance the usefulness of the data. For economic reasons a high degree of automation is required for the quality control process. This goal can be achieved by automatic image analysis techniques. An example of how this can be achieved in the context of quality assessment of cropland and grassland GIS objects is given in this paper. The quality assessment of these objects of a topographic dataset is carried out based on multi-temporal information. The multi-temporal approach combines the channels of all available images as a multilayer image and applies a pixel-based SVM-classification. In this way multispectral as well as multi-temporal information is processed in parallel. The features used for the classification consist of spectral, textural (Haralick features) and structural (features derived from a semi-variogram) features. After the SVM-classification, the pixel-based result is mapped to the GIS-objects. Finally, a simple ruled-based approach is used in order to verify the objects of a GIS database. The approach was tested using a multi-temporal data set consisting of one 5-channel RapidEye image (GSD 5m) and two 3-channel Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC) images (GSD 32m). All images were taken within one year. The results show that by using our approach, quality control of GIS-cropland and grassland objects is possible and the human operator saves time using our approach compared to a completely manual quality assessment.