2011 Joint Urban Remote Sensing Event

In traffic surveillance applications, automatic methods to detect abrupt changes in a traffic scene are highly desirable. A robust method is introduced for camera based assessment of scene changes based on the dynamics derived from the detected objects in the scene. The approach needs a calibrated and oriented camera but no further contextual knowledge and works even with highly fragmented traject... View full abstract»

Airborne LiDAR (ALS) data are characterized by involving not only rich spatial but also temporal information. It is possible to extract moving vehicles with motion artifacts from single-pass airborne LiDAR data, based on which the velocity of vehicles can be derived. In this paper, a series of methods for velocity estimation of moving vehicles using airborne LiDAR data is presented and evaluated. ... View full abstract»

This paper propose a method for automatic vehicle detection in QuickBird images of small highways, with relatively low traffic density, frequent occurrence of tree shadows, and changes in illumination conditions. The vehicle detection is based on an elliptical Laplacian of Gaussian scale space methodology, where the vehicle locations are detected at local extrema in the image response to convoluti... View full abstract»

Airborne image sequences provide useful data for monitoring traffic scenes in large complex urban environments. Tracking vehicles in these low frame rate images is challenging, because of abrupt motion and low resolution description of the targets. In this work, we propose a new particle based method for long-term tracking of multiple vehicles in airborne images. Our tracking system uses a vehicle... View full abstract»

Nowadays many sensors for information acquisition are widely employed in remote sensing and different properties of the objects can be revealed. Unfortunately each imaging sensor has its own limits on scene recognition in the sense of thematic, temporal, and other interpretation. Integration (fusion) of different data types is expected to increase the quality of scene interpretation and decision m... View full abstract»

Thermal inspections of buildings contribute to detection of damaged and weak spots in the building hull. 3D spatial reference for this purpose can be achieved combining infrared images with 3D building models via texture mapping. Using terrestrial image sequences from a camera mounted in a mobile platform frontal faces can be captured, while airborne image sequences can be taken for roofs and inne... View full abstract»

We evaluated an accuracy and efficiency of laser measurement methods that can be utilized in urban tree mapping and monitoring. In this paper we describe our methods and show the first results of the study. In the field, altogether 44 urban trees located in park environment were measured and mapped from our pilot area located in Seurasaari, Helsinki, Finland. Several laser scanning methods were co... View full abstract»

The number and size of urban settlements are increasing in all the continents of the world at a rapid pace. Urban sprawl is associated not only with changes in landcover and area, but also ecological, climate and social transformations. Mapping the growth and spread of urban areas is important. Remote sensing has long been used to map human settlements. Today the availability of a large number of ... View full abstract»

In this paper we present a SVM-based method for automatic quality control of a road database in urban areas. The road verification is carried out by comparing the database objects to high-resolution aerial imagery. The method is trimmed to produce reliable results even if the training data selection is partly non-epresentative. A reliability metric is assigned to the SVM decision that is based on ... View full abstract»

Because of the all-weather and all-time data acquisition capability, high resolution space borne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) plays an important role in remote sensing applications like earth mapping. However, the visual interpretation of SAR images is usually difficult, especially for urban areas. This paper shows a method for visual interpreting SAR images by means of optical and SAR images si... View full abstract»

Urban building density has always being an important indicator for city planning, land management and resident density evaluation. Recently, very high resolution (VHR) Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) sensors, delivering images with metric or sub-metric resolution, make it possible to extract urban fabric (like urban building density) with SAR imagery. In this article, we propose a highly efficient ... View full abstract»

The launch of last-generation satellites (COSMO-SkyMed and TerraSAR-X), equipped with X-band sensors acquiring images with a very high spatial resolution, has opened up new challenges in the field of SAR image processing for remote sensing applications. In this work, a set of Spotlight and Stripmap COSMO-Skymed images taken the Tor Vergata-Frascati test site was considered to investigate on the po... View full abstract»

This paper shows how multiple aspects of highest resolution airborne InSAR data can be combined by simultaneous backward geocoding of the individual aspects. Due to slant range geometry and effects like layover and shadowing, fusing multi-aspect SAR data of urban areas is not possible in image space. Therefore the fusion process is modeled via object space, enabling the exploitation of redundant o... View full abstract»

Multitemporal stacks of SAR images can be used for deformation monitoring in urban areas applying the method of persistent scatterer interferometry (PSI). Very high resolution (VHR) SAR data of recent satellites increase the available number of PS on single objects dramatically. But due to the side looking geometry of SAR satellites, buildings cannot be monitored from all sides using only one sing... View full abstract»

Using long-time coherent scatterers in SAR data, called Persistent Scatterers (PSs), the deformation signal of objects can be measured from space. However, the nature of the corresponding image signatures is not known in detail. Methods focused on the simulation of highly detailed object models help to understand the origin of PSs. In this paper, simulated SAR data are geometrically linked to PSs ... View full abstract»

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the first urban TanDEM-X RawDEMs. The analysis is focused on the different error sources in the interferometric processing chain with special regard to the urban scenarios and on the limits of interferometry for such scenes. The processor and the algorithms used for the RawDEM generation are briefly introduced and results over Munich, Las Vegas and Naples ar... View full abstract»

In this paper, mixed information similarity measure and a multidimensional density estimation method based on multivariate Edgeworth series expansion are proposed and assessed for the task of multi-temporal change detection. To unify mutual information and variational information, mixed information is proposed to quantify the degree of dependence between two random variables, which are intuitively... View full abstract»

With the rapid development of remote sensing techniques, change detection plays an important role in urban monitoring. In this paper, difference-based methods are compared and evaluated for reconstruction monitoring of urban area using very high resolution (VHR) optical data, which are classical image differencing, iteratively reweighted multivariate alteration detection (IR-MAD) and IR-MAD incorp... View full abstract»

This paper addresses built up change detection using texture features derived from SPOT Panchromatic imagery and principal component analysis (PCA). SPOT imagery combines the adequate ground sampling distance (GSD) and large area coverage that extends beyond cities to include the peri-urban areas where urban sprawl (built-up change) typically occurs. This study uses SPOT 1 and SPOT 5 panchromatic ... View full abstract»

Our planet is more and more transforming into an urban world, in which the dynamics of urbanization have overcome the ability to govern cities. In a situation of uncoordinated urban growth, regional and urban planning lack technologies and methodologies to measure, monitor and analyze the spatio-temporal pattern of dynamic urban sprawl. This paper focuses on methods using remote sensing data to an... View full abstract»