Polarimetric SAR decomposition parameter subset selection and their optimal dynamic range evaluation for urban area classification using Random Forest

Urban area classification is important for monitoring the ever increasing urbanization and studying its environmental impact. Two NASA JPL's UAVSAR datasets of L-band (wavelength: 23 cm) were used in this study for urban area classification. The two datasets used in this study are different in terms of urban area structures, building patterns, their geometric shapes and sizes. In these datasets, some urban areas appear oriented about the radar line of sight (LOS) while some areas appear non-oriented. In this study, roll invariant polarimetric SAR decomposition parameters were used to classify these urban areas. Random Forest (RF), which is an ensemble decision tree learning technique, was used in this study. RF performs parameter subset selection as a part of its classification procedure. In this study, parameter subsets were obtained and analyzed to infer scattering mechanisms useful for urban area classification. The Cloude-Pottier alpha, the Touzi dominant scattering amplitude as, and the anisotropy A were among the top six important parameters selected for both the datasets. However, it was observed that these parameters were ranked differently for the two datasets. The urban area classification using RF was compared with the Support Vector Machine (SVM) and the Maximum Likelihood Classifier (MLC) for both the datasets. RF outperforms SVM by 4% and MLC by 12% in Dataset 1. It also outperforms SVM and MLC by 3.5% and 11% respectively in Dataset 2. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved