A hybrid approach to land cover classification from multi spectral images

This work is part of a wider project whose general objective is to develop a methodology for the automatic classification, based on CORINE land-cover (CLC) classes, of high resolution multispectral IKONOS images. The specific objective of this paper is to describe a new methodology for producing really exploitable results from automatic classification algorithms. Input data are basically constituted by multispectral images, integrated with textural and contextual measures. The output is constituted by an image with each pixel assigned to one out of 15 classes at the second level of the CLC legend or let unclassified (somehow a better solution than a classification error), plus a stability map that helps users to separate the regions classified with high accuracy from those whose classification result should be verified before being used. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.