A KNOWLEDGE-BASED APPROACH ON GLOBELAND30 INCREMENTAL UPDATING: A CASE STUDY OF BUILT-UP AREA

Abstract. Global land cover/land use product in multiple periods is pivotal to understand the complex drivers and mechanisms in global climate change, and to forecast future land use trends in sustainable development. GlobeLand30, as the world’s first high spatial resolution land cover product (83% accuracy), needs to be continually updated to meet various needs. However, many challenges - such as removing pseudo change to keep consistency of updating - remain unsolved. To deal with high temporal and spatial variability happened within built-up area class and between it and other classes, this paper presents an alternative approach that exploits domain knowledge and object-based change detection technique. The central premise of the approach is that one-class segmentation is first proceeded on both former image and current image. Then, segments of former image are labeled by using corresponding Globeland30 product. Segments of built-up area in current image are finally recognized through correlation which is established based on domain knowledge. Knowledge used in this study mainly includes area index, shape index, perimeter index, spectral similarity, 'from to' types and spatial relation. The proposed method and classification method were tested for their ability for built-up area updating in Shandong area. Results showed that the proposed method proved particularly effective for maintaining consistency of unchanged areas from former product to current one, and more than 80% changes could be identified correctly. The proposed method also provided a practical way for an economic and accurate updating of Globeland30 product.