Urbanization Detection by a Region Based Mixed Information Change Analysis Between Built-Up Indicators

A method for analyzing the urbanization process from multitemporal SPOT 5 panchromatic images is presented. The analysis is performed by unsupervised change detection between built-up presence indicators extracted separately from the scenes. The obtained index has an effective resolution which is coarser than the Ground Sample Distance, thus allowing a good spatial match between the indicators. Then, a local Mixed Information change indicator is employed in order to capture the non-linear temporal behaviors. A region-based approach is developed in synergy with the local Mixed Information in order to process consistently large scenes which may be affected by regional distortions. Experiments are conducted on SPOT 5 scenes acquired in 2003 and 2008 which cover a suburban area ($45 \times 45$km$^2$) of the city of Tangshan in China. The urbanization detector is validated by visual interpretation, giving an equal omission/commission probability of $10\%$. A comparison to linear change indicators highlights an improvement of $15\%$ of the equal omission/commission probability.JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen