Yifang Ban

Fusion of Quickbird MS and RADARSAT SAR data for urban land-cover mapping: object-based and knowledge-based approach

The objective of this research is to evaluate Quickbird multi-spectral (MS) data, multi-temporal RADARSAT Fine-Beam C-HH synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data and fusion of Quickbird MS and RADARSAT SAR for urban land-use/land-cover mapping. One scene of Quickbird multi-spectral imagery was acquired on 18 July 2002 and five-date RADARSAT fine-beam SAR images were acquired during May to August 2002. Quickbird MS images and RADARSAT SAR data were classified using an object-based and rule-based approach. The results demonstrated that the object-based and knowledge-based approach was effective in extracting urban land-cover classes. For identifying 16 land-cover classes, object-based and rule-based classification of Quickbird MS data yielded an overall classification accuracy of 87.9% (kappa: 0.868). For identifying 11 land-cover classes, object-based and rule-based classification of RADARSAT SAR data yielded an overall accuracy: 86.6% (kappa: 0.852 ). Decision level fusion of Quickbird classification and RADARSAT SAR classification was able to take advantage of the best classifications of both optical and SAR data, thus significantly improving the classification accuracies of several land-cover classes (25% for pasture, 19% for soybeans, 17% for rapeseeds) even though the overall classification accuracy of 16 land-cover classes increased only slightly to 89.5% (kappa: 0.885).

Multitemporal Spaceborne SAR Data for Urban Change Detection in China

The objective of this research is to examine effective methods for urban change detection using multitemporal spaceborne SAR data in two rapid expanding cities in China. One scene of ERS-2 SAR C-VV image was acquired in Beijing in 1998 and in shanghai in 1999 respectively and one scene of ENVISAT ASAR C-VV image was acquired in near-anniversary dates in 2008 in Beijing and Shanghai. To compare the SAR images from different dates, a modified ratio operator that takes into account both positive and negative changes was developed to derive a change image. A generalized version of Kittler-Illingworth minimum-error thresholding algorithm was then tested to automatically classify the change image into two classes, change and no change. Various probability density functions such as Log normal, Generalized Gaussian, Nakagami ratio, and Weibull ratio were investigated to model the distribution of the change and no change classes. The results showed that Kittler-Illingworth algorithm applied to the modified ratio image is very effective in detecting temporal changes in urban areas using SAR images. Log normal and Nakagami density models achieved the best results. The Kappa coefficients of these methods were of 0.82 and 0.71 for Beijing and Shanghai respectively while the false alarm rates were 2.7% and 4.75%. The findings indicated that the change accuracies obtained using Kittler-Illingworth algorithm vary depending on how the assumed conditional class density function fits the histograms of change and no change classes.

Urban growth and environmental impacts in Jing-Jin-Ji, the Yangtze, River Delta and the Pearl River Delta

This study investigates land cover changes, magnitude and speed of urbanization and evaluates possible impacts on the environment by the concepts of landscape metrics and ecosystem services in Chin ...

Simulation and analysis of urban growth scenarios for the Greater Shanghai Area, China

This research investigates the potential of an integrated Markov chain analysis and cellular automata model to better understand the dynamics of Shanghais urban growth. The model utilizes detailed land cover categories to simulate and assess landscape changes under three different scenarios, i.e., baseline, Service Oriented Center, and Manufacturing Dominant Center scenarios. In the study, multi-temporal land use datasets, derived from remotely-sensed images from 1995, 2000, and 2005, were used for simulation and validation. Urban growth patterns and processes were then analyzed and compared with the aid of landscape metrics. This research represents the first scenario-based simulations of the future growth of Shanghai, and is one of the few studies to use landscape metrics to analyze urban scenario-based simulation results with detailed land use categories. The results indicate that the future expansion of both high-density and low-density residential/commercial zones is always located around existing built-up urban areas or along existing transportation lines. In contrast to the baseline and Service Oriented Center scenarios, industrial land under the Manufacturing Dominant Center scenario in 2015 and 2025 will form industrial parks or industrial belts along the transportation channels from Shanghai to Nanjing and Hangzhou. The studys approach, which combines scenario-based urban simulation modeling and landscape metrics, is shown to be effective in representing, understanding, and predicting the spatial-temporal dynamics and patterns of urban evolution, including urban expansion trends

Improving Urban Change Detection From Multitemporal SAR Images Using PCA-NLM

Multitemporal synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images have been increasingly used in change detection studies. However, the presence of speckle is the main disadvantage of this type of data. To reduce speckle, many local adaptive filters have been developed. Although these filters are effective in reducing speckle in homogeneous areas, their use is often accompanied with the degradation of spatial details and fine structures. In this paper, we investigate a nonlocal means (NLM) denoising algorithm that combines local structures with a global averaging scheme in the context of change detection using multitemporal SAR images. First, the ratio image is logarithmically scaled to convert the multiplicative noise model to an additive model. A multidimensional change image is then constructed using image neighborhood feature vectors. Principle component analysis is then used to reduce the dimensionality of the neighborhood feature vectors. Recursive linear regression combined with fitting-accuracy assessment strategy is developed to determine the number of significant PC components to be retained for similarity weight computation. An intuitive method to estimate the unknown noise variance (necessary to run the NLM algorithm) based on the discarded PC components is also proposed. The efficiency of the method has been assessed using two different bitemporal SAR datasets acquired in Beijing and Shanghai, respectively. For comparison purposes, the algorithm is also tested against some of the most commonly used local adaptive filters. Qualitative and quantitative analyses of the algorithm have demonstrated the efficiency of the algorithm in recovering the noise-free change image while preserving the complex structures in urban areas.

Multi-temporal RADARSAT-2 polarimetric SAR data for urban land-cover classification using an object-based support vector machine and a rule-based approach

We have investigated multi-temporal polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data for urban land-cover classification using an object-based support vector machine (SVM) in combinations of rules. Six-date RADARSAT-2 high-resolution polarimetric SAR data in both ascending and descending passes were acquired in the rural–urban fringe of the Greater Toronto Area during the summer of 2008. The major land-use/land-cover classes include high-density residential areas, low-density residential areas, industrial and commercial areas, construction sites, parks, golf courses, forests, pasture, water, and two types of agricultural crops. Various polarimetric SAR parameters were evaluated for urban land-cover mapping and they include the parameters from Pauli, Freeman and Cloude–Pottier decompositions, the coherency matrix, intensities of each polarization, and their logarithm forms. The multi-temporal SAR polarimetric features were classified first using an SVM classifier. Then specific rules were developed to improve the SVM classification results by extracting major roads and streets using shape features and contextual information. For the comparison of the polarimetric SAR parameters, the best classification performance was achieved using the compressed logarithmic filtered Pauli parameters. For the evaluation of the multi-temporal SAR data set, the best classification result was achieved using all six-date data (kappa = 0.91), while very good classification results (kappa = 0.86) were achieved using only three-date polarimetric SAR data. The results indicate that the combination of both the ascending and the descending polarimetric SAR data with an appropriate temporal span is suitable for urban land-cover mapping.

Complex Network Topology of Transportation Systems

ABSTRACT As a strategic factor for a country to survive in the global competition, transportation systems have attracted extensive attention from different disciplines for a long time. Since the introduction of complex network theory in the last decade, however, studies on transport systems have witnessed dramatic progress. Most roads, streets, and rails are organized as a network pattern, while link flows, travel time, or geographical distance are regarded as weights. In this article, the authors will present the current state of topological research on transportation systems under a complex network framework, as well as the efforts and challenges that have been made in the last decade. First, different kinds of transportation systems should be generalized as networks in different ways, which will be explained in the first part of this paper. We follow this by summarizing network measures that describe topological characteristics of transportation networks. Then we discuss the empirical observations from the last decade on real transportation systems at a variety of spatial scales. This paper concludes with some important challenges and open research frontiers in this field.

An empirical study on human mobility and its agent-based modeling

This paper aims to analyze the GPS traces of 258 volunteers in order to obtain a better understanding of both the human mobility patterns and the mechanism. We report the regular and scaling properties of human mobility for several aspects, and importantly we identify its Levy flight characteristic, which is consistent with those from previous studies. We further assume two factors that may govern the Levy flight property: (1) the scaling and hierarchical properties of the purpose clusters which serve as the underlying spatial structure, and (2) the individual preferential behaviors. To verify the assumptions, we implement an agent-based model with the two factors, and the simulated results do indeed capture the same Levy flight pattern as is observed. In order to enable the model to reproduce more mobility patterns, we add to the model a third factor: the jumping factor, which is the probability that one person may cancel their regular mobility schedule and explore a random place. With this factor, our model can cover a relatively wide range of human mobility patterns with scaling exponent values from 1.55 to 2.05.

Context-based mapping of damaged buildings from high-resolution optical satellite images

In the early stages of post-disaster response, a quick and reliable damage assessment map is essential. As time is a critical factor, automated damage mapping from remotely sensed images is the expected solution to drastically reduce data acquisition and computation time. Recently, high-resolution satellite images, such as QuickBird data, have been in high demand by damage assessment analysts and disaster management practitioners. However, the existing automated mapping approaches hardly accommodate such high-resolution data. This research aims at developing a new context-based automated approach for earthquake damage mapping from high-resolution satellite images. Relevant contextual information (including structure, shape, size, edge texture, spatial relations) describing the damage situation is formulated and up-scaled on a morphological scale-space. Speed optimization is achieved by parallel processing implementation. The developed approach was tested with two QuickBird images acquired on 26 June 2005 and 3 June 2008 over YingXiu town, Sichuan, China, which suffered the devastating 12 May 2008 earthquake. In comparison to the reference, the developed mapping approach could achieve over 80% accuracy for computation of the damage ratio. Future research is planned to test the approach on various disaster cases for both optical and radar images using a grid-computing platform towards a cost-effective damage mapping solution.

Object-Based Fusion of Multitemporal Multiangle ENVISAT ASAR and HJ-1B Multispectral Data for Urban Land-Cover Mapping

The objectives of this research are to develop robust methods for segmentation of multitemporal synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and optical data and to investigate the fusion of multitemporal ENVISAT advanced synthetic aperture radar (ASAR) and Chinese HJ-1B multispectral data for detailed urban land-cover mapping. Eight-date multiangle ENVISAT ASAR images and one-date HJ-1B charge-coupled device image acquired over Beijing in 2009 are selected for this research. The edge-aware region growing and merging (EARGM) algorithm is developed for segmentation of SAR and optical data. Edge detection using a Sobel filter is applied on SAR and optical data individually, and a majority voting approach is used to integrate all edge images. The edges are then used in a segmentation process to ensure that segments do not grow over edges. The segmentation is influenced by minimum and maximum segment sizes as well as the two homogeneity criteria, namely, a measure of color and a measure of texture. The classification is performed using support vector machines. The results show that our EARGM algorithm produces better segmentation than eCognition, particularly for built-up classes and linear features. The best classification result (80%) is achieved using the fusion of eight-date ENVISAT ASAR and HJ-1B data. This represents 5%, 11%, and 14% improvements over eCognition, HJ-1B, and ASAR classifications, respectively. The second best classification is achieved using fusion of four-date ENVISAT ASAR and HJ-1B data (78%). The result indicates that fewer multitemporal SAR images can achieve similar classification accuracy if multitemporal multiangle dual-look-direction SAR data are carefully selected.