Deep learning-based change detection in remote sensing images:a review

Images gathered from different satellites are vastly available these days due to the fast development of remote sensing (RS) technology. These images significantly enhance the data sources of change detection (CD). CD is a technique of recognizing the dissimilarities in the images acquired at distinct intervals and are used for numerous applications, such as urban area development, disaster management, land cover object identification, etc. In recent years, deep learning (DL) techniques have been used tremendously in change detection processes, where it has achieved great success because of their practical applications. Some researchers have even claimed that DL approaches outperform traditional approaches and enhance change detection accuracy. Therefore, this review focuses on deep learning techniques, such as supervised, unsupervised, and semi-supervised for different change detection datasets, such as SAR, multispectral, hyperspectral, VHR, and heterogeneous images, and their advantages and disadvantages will be highlighted. In the end, some significant challenges are discussed to understand the context of improvements in change detection datasets and deep learning models. Overall, this review will be beneficial for the future development of CD methods

Advanced Pre-Processing and Change-Detection Techniques for the Analysis of Multitemporal VHR Remote Sensing Images

Remote sensing images regularly acquired by satellite over the same geographical areas (multitemporal images) provide very important information on the land cover dynamic. In the last years the ever increasing availability of multitemporal very high geometrical resolution (VHR) remote sensing images (which have sub-metric resolution) resulted in new potentially relevant applications related to environmental monitoring and land cover control and management. The most of these applications are associated with the analysis of dynamic phenomena (both anthropic and non anthropic) that occur at different scales and result in changes on the Earth surface. In this context, in order to adequately exploit the huge amount of data acquired by remote sensing satellites, it is mandatory to develop unsupervised and automatic techniques for an efficient and effective analysis of such kind of multitemporal data. In the literature several techniques have been developed for the automatic analysis of multitemporal medium/high resolution data. However these techniques do not result effective when dealing with VHR images. The main reasons consist in their inability both to exploit the high geometrical detail content of VHR data and to model the multiscale nature of the scene (and therefore of possible changes). In this framework it is important to develop unsupervised change-detection(CD) methods able to automatically manage the large amount of information of VHR data, without the need of any prior information on the area under investigation. Even if these methods usually identify only the presence/absence of changes without giving information about the kind of change occurred, they are considered the most interesting from an operational perspective, as in the most of the applications no multitemporal ground truth information is available. Considering the above mentioned limitations, in this thesis we study the main problems related to multitemporal VHR images with particular attention to registration noise (i.e. the noise related to a non-perfect alignment of the multitemporal images under investigation). Then, on the basis of the results of the conducted analysis, we develop robust unsupervised and automatic change-detection methods. In particular, the following specific issues are addressed in this work: 1. Analysis of the effects of registration noise in multitemporal VHR images and definition of a method for the estimation of the distribution of such kind of noise useful for defining: a. Change-detection techniques robust to registration noise (RN); the proposed techniques are able to significantly reduce the false alarm rate due to RN that is raised by the standard CD techniques when dealing with VHR images. b. Effective registration methods; the proposed strategies are based on a multiscale analysis of the scene which allows one to extract accurate control points for the registration of VHR images. 2. Detection and discrimination of multiple changes in multitemporal images; this techniques allow one to overcome the limitation of the existing unsupervised techniques, as they are able to identify and separate different kinds of change without any prior information on the study areas. 3. Pre-processing techniques for optimizing change detection on VHR images; in particular, in this context we evaluate the impact of: a. Image transformation techniques on the results of the CD process; b. Different strategies of image pansharpening applied to the original multitemporal images on the results of the CD process. For each of the above mentioned topic an analysis of the state of the art is carried out, the limitations of existing methods are pointed out and the proposed solutions to the addressed problems are described in details. Finally, experimental results conducted on both simulated and real data are reported in order to show and confirm the validity of all the proposed methods

Urban damage assessment using multimodal QuickBird images and ancillary data: the Bam and the Boumerdes earthquakes

International audienceRemote sensing has proved its usefulness for the crisis mitigation through situation report and damage assessment. Visual analysis of satellite images is conducted by analysts, however automatic or decision aid method are desired. We propose a semi-automatic damage assessment method based on a pair of very high spatial resolution (VHR) images and some ancillary data. It is applied to two disaster cases, for which the QuickBird images acquisition conditions differ. For each case, the two images also have very different viewing and illumination angles. Hence their comparison requires a preliminary registration; an automatic method adapted to VHR images is described. Then several change features are extracted from the buildings, and their relevance to assess damage on buildings is evaluated. Some textural features allow a damage assessment, but correlation coefficients are more efficient. Finally, a step toward the full automation of the method is done, skipping the supervision step of the classification process. We show the robustness of the global approach for both disaster cases with average performances closed to 75 % when 4 damage classes are discriminated, up to 90 % for a intact/damaged detection

A Comprehensive Survey of Deep Learning in Remote Sensing: Theories, Tools and Challenges for the Community

In recent years, deep learning (DL), a re-branding of neural networks (NNs), has risen to the top in numerous areas, namely computer vision (CV), speech recognition, natural language processing, etc. Whereas remote sensing (RS) possesses a number of unique challenges, primarily related to sensors and applications, inevitably RS draws from many of the same theories as CV; e.g., statistics, fusion, and machine learning, to name a few. This means that the RS community should be aware of, if not at the leading edge of, of advancements like DL. Herein, we provide the most comprehensive survey of state-of-the-art RS DL research. We also review recent new developments in the DL field that can be used in DL for RS. Namely, we focus on theories, tools and challenges for the RS community. Specifically, we focus on unsolved challenges and opportunities as it relates to (i) inadequate data sets, (ii) human-understandable solutions for modelling physical phenomena, (iii) Big Data, (iv) non-traditional heterogeneous data sources, (v) DL architectures and learning algorithms for spectral, spatial and temporal data, (vi) transfer learning, (vii) an improved theoretical understanding of DL systems, (viii) high barriers to entry, and (ix) training and optimizing the DL.Comment: 64 pages, 411 references. To appear in Journal of Applied Remote Sensin

Comparing Three Spaceborne Optical Sensors via Fine Scale Pixel-based Urban Land Cover Classification Products

Accessibility to higher resolution earth observation satellites suggests an improvement in the potential for fine scale image classification. In this comparative study, imagery from three optical satellites (WorldView-2, Pleiades and RapidEye) were used to extract primary land cover classesfrom a pixel-based classification principle in a suburban area. Following a systematic working procedure, manual segmentation and vegetation indices were applied to generate smaller subsets to in turn develop sets of ISODATA unsupervised classification maps. With the focus on the land cover classification differences detected between the sensors at spectral level, the validation of accuracies and their relevance for fine scale classification in the built-up environment domain were examined. If an overview of an urban area is required, RapidEye will provide an above average (0.69 k) result with the built-up class sufficiently extracted. The higher resolution sensors such as WorldView-2 and Pleiades in comparison delivered finer scale accuracy at pixel and parcel level with high correlation and accuracy levels (0.65-0.71k) achieved from these two independent classifications

Multisource and Multitemporal Data Fusion in Remote Sensing

The sharp and recent increase in the availability of data captured by different sensors combined with their considerably heterogeneous natures poses a serious challenge for the effective and efficient processing of remotely sensed data. Such an increase in remote sensing and ancillary datasets, however, opens up the possibility of utilizing multimodal datasets in a joint manner to further improve the performance of the processing approaches with respect to the application at hand. Multisource data fusion has, therefore, received enormous attention from researchers worldwide for a wide variety of applications. Moreover, thanks to the revisit capability of several spaceborne sensors, the integration of the temporal information with the spatial and/or spectral/backscattering information of the remotely sensed data is possible and helps to move from a representation of 2D/3D data to 4D data structures, where the time variable adds new information as well as challenges for the information extraction algorithms. There are a huge number of research works dedicated to multisource and multitemporal data fusion, but the methods for the fusion of different modalities have expanded in different paths according to each research community. This paper brings together the advances of multisource and multitemporal data fusion approaches with respect to different research communities and provides a thorough and discipline-specific starting point for researchers at different levels (i.e., students, researchers, and senior researchers) willing to conduct novel investigations on this challenging topic by supplying sufficient detail and references