Digital Image Classification: a Comparison of Classic Methods for Land Cover and Land Use Mapping

Abstract

In the classification of images for land cover and land use mapping, several methods can be applied, however, they can present different results in relation to field truth. Therefore, the objective of this work was to test techniques for classifying high spatial digital images obtained from the Google Earth Pro® platform. The images refer to a section of the Federal University of Goias, campus Samambaia Goiania - GO, Brazil. Classification tests were performed on the images obtained, using two classifiers per region and two classifiers per pixel, both available free of charge, in the Spring software of the National Institute for Space Research (INPE / Brazil). For the analysis of the quality of the classifications, the results were compared to a survey by direct method, in this case the topographic one, seeking to identify which classifier came closest to the field truth. The classification that presented the best performance and class separability was the Bhattacharya, with Global Accuracy of 0.85. Bhattacharya was also the classifier that came closest in terms of measured areas, by the topographic survey, with the areas of the “zinc roofing” use class, analyzed and calculated.