Remote Sensing Image Classification: A survey of support-vector-machine-based advanced techniques

Land-cover mapping in remote sensing (RS) applications renders rich information for decision support and environmental monitoring systems. The derivation of such information increasingly relies on robust classification methods for identifying the complex land-cover area of different categories. Numerous classification techniques have been designed for the analysis of RS imagery. In this context, support vector machines (SVMs) have recently received increasing interest. However, the need for a small-size training set remains a bottleneck to design efficient supervised classifiers, while an adequate number of unlabeled data is readily available in RS images and can be exploited as a supplementary source of information. To fully leverage these precious unlabeled data, a number of promising advanced SVM-based methods, such as active SVMs, semisupervised SVMs (S3VMs), and SVMs combined with other algorithms, have been developed to analyze satellite imagery. In this literature review, we have surveyed these learning techniques to explore RS images. Moreover, we have provided the empirical evidences of SVMs and three representative techniques. It is our hope that this review will provide guidelines to future researchers to enhance further algorithmic developments in RS applications.