Assessing the relationship between spatial features derived from high resolution satellite imagery and census variables in Accra, Ghana

People living within cities tend to live near others who have similar characteristics such as socioeconomic status, religion or ethnicity. Generally the characteristics of these spatial groups manifest themselves at the neighborhood level and they live in similar dwellings. In this study we examine the ability to use spatial features and spectral information, derived from high spatial resolution satellite data, to map variations in dwellings to determine the amount of information we can derive about the people living within the city of Accra, Ghana. The spatial features examined are line support regions, PanTex, Histogram of Oriented Gradients, Local Binary Patterns, Hough and Fourier transforms, and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). Results indicate that there are strong correlations between multiple spatial features and census variables at the neighborhood scale. This indicates that the spatial information derived from imagery can be used to map population characteristics at within city spatial scales.