Distributed boosting for cloud detection

The SPOT 6-7 satellite ground segment includes a systematic and automatic cloud detection step in order to feed a catalogue with a binary cloud mask and an appropriate confidence measure. In order to significantly improve the SPOT cloud detection and get rid of frequent manual re-labelings, we study a new automatic cloud detection technique that is adapted to large datasets. The proposed method is based on a modified distributed boosting algorithm. Experiments conducted using the framework Apache Spark on a SPOT 6 image database with various landscapes and cloud coverage show promising results.