A Deep Neural Networks Approach for Augmenting Samples of Land Cover Classification

Chuanpeng Zhao and Yaohuan Huang
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Chuanpeng Zhao: State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System, Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Yaohuan Huang: State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System, Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China

Land, 2020, vol. 9, issue 8, 1-17

Abstract: Land cover is one of key indicators for modeling ecological, environmental, and climatic processes, which changes frequently due to natural factors and anthropogenic activities. The changes demand various samples for updating land cover maps, although in reality the number of samples is always insufficient. Sample augment methods can fill this gap, but these methods still face difficulties, especially for high-resolution remote sensing data. The difficulties include the following: (1) excessive human involvement, which is mostly caused by human interpretation, even by active learning-based methods; (2) large variations of segmented land cover objects, which affects the generalization to unseen areas especially for proposed methods that are validated in small study areas. To solve these problems, we proposed a sample augment method incorporating the deep neural networks using a Gaofen-2 image. To avoid error accumulation, the neural network-based sample augment (NNSA) framework employs non-iterative procedure, and augments from 184 image objects with labels to 75,112 samples. The overall accuracy (OA) of NNSA is 20% higher than that of label propagation (LP) in reference to expert interpreted results; the LP has an OA of 61.16%. The accuracy decreases by approximately 10% in the coastal validation area, which has different characteristics from the inland samples. We also compared the iterative and non-iterative strategies without external information added. The results of the validation area containing original samples show that non-iterative methods have a higher OA and a lower sample imbalance. The NNSA method that augments sample size with higher accuracy can benefit the update of land cover information.

Keywords: sample augment; deep neural network; small size samples; land cover; object-based image analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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