Google Earth Engine cloud computing platform for remote sensing big data applications: a comprehensive review

Remote sensing (RS) systems have been collecting massive volumes of datasets for decades, managing and analyzing of which are not practical using common software packages and desktop computing resources. In this regard, Google has developed a cloud computing platform, called Google Earth Engine (GEE), to effectively address the challenges of big data analysis. In particular, this platformfacilitates processing big geo data over large areas and monitoring the environment for long periods of time. Although this platformwas launched in 2010 and has proved its high potential for different applications, it has not been fully investigated and utilized for RS applications until recent years. Therefore, this study aims to comprehensively explore different aspects of the GEE platform, including its datasets, functions, advantages/limitations, and various applications. For this purpose, 450 journal articles published in 150 journals between January 2010 andMay 2020 were studied. It was observed that Landsat and Sentinel datasets were extensively utilized by GEE users. Moreover, supervised machine learning algorithms, such as Random Forest, were more widely applied to image classification tasks. GEE has also been employed in a broad range of applications, such as Land Cover/land Use classification, hydrology, urban planning, natural disaster, climate analyses, and image processing. It was generally observed that the number of GEE publications have significantly increased during the past few years, and it is expected that GEE will be utilized by more users from different fields to resolve their big data processing challenges.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Temperature-Vegetation-soil Moisture-Precipitation Drought Index (TVMPDI); 21-year drought monitoring in Iran using satellite imagery within Google Earth Engine

Remote Sensing (RS) offers efficient tools for drought monitoring, especially in countries with a lack of reliable and consistent in-situ multi-temporal datasets. In this study, a novel RS- based Drought Index (RSDI) named Temperature-Vegetation-soil Moisture-Precipitation Drought Index (TVMPDI) was proposed. To the best of our knowledge, TVMPDI is the first RSDI using four different drought indicators in its formulation. TVMPDI was then validated and compared with six conventional RSDIs including VCI, TCI, VHI, TVDI, MPDI and TVMDI. To this end, precipitation and soil temperature in-situ data have been used. Different time scales of meteorological Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) index have also been used for the validation 2 of the RSDIs. TVMPDI was highly correlated with the monthly precipitation and soil temperature in-situ data at 0.76 and 0.81 values respectively. The correlation coefficients between the RSDIs and 3-month SPI ranged from 0.07 to 0.28, identifying the TVMPDI as the most suitable index for subsequent analyses. Since the proposed TVMPDI could considerably outperform the other selected RSDIs, all spatiotemporal drought monitoring analyses in Iran were conducted by TVMPDI over the past 21 years. In this study, different products of the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS), Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), and Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) datasets containing 15206 images were used on the Google Earth Engine (GEE) cloud computing platform. According to the results, Iran experienced the most severe drought in 2000 with a 0.715 TVMPDI value lasting for almost two years. Conversely, the TVMPDI showed a minimum value equal to 0.6781 in 2019 as the lowest annual drought level. The drought severity and trend in the 31 provinces of Iran have also been mapped. Consequently, various levels of decrease over the 21 years were found for different provinces, while Isfahan and Gilan were the only provinces showing an ascending drought trend (with a 0.004% and 0.002% trendline slope respectively). Khuzestan also faced a worrying drought prevalence that occurred in several years. In summary, this study provides updated information about drought trends in Iran using an advanced and efficient RSDI implemented in the cloud computing GEE platform. These results are beneficial for decision-makers and officials responsible for environmental sustainability, agriculture and the effects of climate change.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Status and trends of wetland studies in Canada using remote sensing technology with a focus on wetland classification: a bibliographic analysis

A large portion of Canada is covered by wetlands; mapping and monitoring them is of great importance for various applications. In this regard, Remote Sensing (RS) technology has been widely employed for wetland studies in Canada over the past 45 years. This study evaluates meta-data to investigate the status and trends of wetland studies in Canada using RS technology by reviewing the scientific papers published between 1976 and the end of 2020 (300 papers in total). Initially, a meta-analysis was conducted to analyze the status of RS-based wetland studies in terms of the wetland classification systems, methods, classes, RS data usage, publication details (e.g., authors, keywords, citations, and publications time), geographic information, and level of classification accuracies. The deep systematic review of 128 peer-reviewed articles illustrated the rising trend in using multi-source RS datasets along with advanced machine learning algorithms for wetland mapping in Canada. It was also observed that most of the studies were implemented over the province of Ontario. Pixel-based supervised classifiers were the most popular wetland classification algorithms. This review summarizes different RS systems and methodologies for wetland mapping in Canada to outline how RS has been utilized for the generation of wetland inventories. The results of this review paper provide the current state-of-the-art methods and datasets for wetland studies in Canada and will provide direction for future wetland mapping research.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Automatic mapping of burned areas using Landsat 8 time-series images in Google Earth engine: a case study from Iran

Due to the natural conditions and inappropriate management responses, large part of plains and forests in Iran have been burned in recent years. Given the increasing availability of open-access satellite images and open-source software packages, we developed a fast and cost-effective remote sensing methodology for characterizing burned areas for the entire country of Iran. We mapped the fire-affected areas using a post-classification supervised method and Landsat 8 time-series images. To this end, the Google Earth Engine (GEE) and Google Colab computing services were used to facilitate the downloading and processing of images as well as allowing for effective implementation of the algorithms. In total, 13 spectral indices were calculated using Landsat 8 images and were added to the nine original bands of Landsat 8. The training polygons of the burned and unburned areas were accurately distinguished based on the information acquired from the Iranian Space Agency (ISA), Sentinel-2 images, and Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) products. A combination of Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Neural Network (NN) approaches was then implemented to specify 19 optimal features out of the 22 bands. The 19 optimal bands were subsequently applied to two classifiers of NN and Random Forest (RF) in the timespans of 1 January 2019 to 30 December 2020 and of 1 January 2021 to 30 September 2021. The overall classification accuracies of 94% and 96% were obtained for these two classifiers, respectively. The omission and commission errors of both classifiers were also less than 10%, indicating the promising capability of the proposed methodology in detecting the burned areas. To detect the burned areas caused by the wildfire in 2021, the image differencing method was used as well. The resultant models were finally compared to the MODIS fire products over 10 sampled polygons of the burned areas. Overall, the models had a high accuracy in detecting the burned areas in terms of shape and perimeter, which can be further implicated for potential prevention strategies of endangered biodiversity.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Global evaluation of SMAP/Sentinel-1 soil moisture products

MAP/Sentinel-1 soil moisture is the latest SMAP (Soil Moisture Active Passive) product derived from synergistic utilization of the radiometry observations of SMAP and radar backscattering data of Sentinel-1. This product is the first and only global soil moisture (SM) map at 1 km and 3 km spatial resolutions. In this paper, we evaluated the SMAP/Sentinel-1 SM product from different viewpoints to better understand its quality, advantages, and likely limitations. A comparative analysis of this product and in situ measurements, for the time period March 2015 to January 2022, from 35 dense and sparse SM networks and 561 stations distributed around the world was carried out. We examined the effects of land cover, vegetation fraction, water bodies, urban areas, soil characteristics, and seasonal climatic conditions on the performance of active–passive SMAP/Sentinel-1 in estimating the SM. We also compared the performance metrics of enhanced SMAP (9 km) and SMAP/Sentinel-1 products (3 km) to analyze the effects of the active–passive disaggregation algorithm on various features of the SMAP SM maps. Results showed satisfactory agreement between SMAP/Sentinel-1 and in situ SM measurements for most sites (r values between 0.19 and 0.95 and ub-RMSE between 0.03 and 0.17), especially for dense sites without representativeness errors. Thanks to the vegetation effect correction applied in the active–passive algorithm, the SMAP/Sentinel-1 product had the highest correlation with the reference data in grasslands and croplands. Results also showed that the accuracy of the SMAP/Sentinel-1 SM product in different networks is independent of the presence of water bodies, urban areas, and soil types.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Pyrenees deformation monitoring using Sentinel-1 data and the Persistent Scatterer Interferometry technique

This study focuses on deformation mapping and monitoring using Sentinel-1 radar data and the DInSAR (Differential Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar) technique. In particular, a Persistent Scatterer Interferometry technique was used over 15000 ¿¿¿¿2 of the Pyrenees, located in Spain, Andorra and France. The main goal is to monitor deformations over a vegetated and mountainous region by exploiting the wide-area coverage, the high coherence and temporal sampling provided by the Sentinel-1satellites. All possible interferograms were generated using 150 images covering five years. The velocity map of the entire region is presented considering the characteristics of the study area, including vegetation and severe steep mountains. Two areas of deformation are shown, which are characterized by velocity values ranging between -20 to -40 mm/year.The work of S.M. Mirmazloumi has been funded by the Spanish State Research Agency, through a grant for a pre doctorate contract (Ref: PRE2018-083394). This work has been co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund through the Interreg V-A Spain, France and Andorra (POCTEFA 2014-2020), project EFA295/19Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

InSAR time series and LSTM model to support early warning detection tools of ground instabilities: mining site case studies

Early alarm systems can activate vital precautions for saving lives and the economy threatened by natural hazards and human activities. Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) products generate valuable ground motion data with high spatial and temporal resolutions. Integrating the InSAR products and forecasting models make possible to set up early alarm systems to monitor vulnerable areas. This study proposes a technical support to early warning detection tools of ground instabilities using machine learning and InSAR time series that is capable of forecasting regions affected by potential collapses. A long short-term memory (LSTM) model is tailored to predict ground movements in three forecast ranges (i.e., SAR observations): 3, 4, and 5 multistep. A contribution of the proposed strategy is utilizing adjacent time series to decrease the possibility of falsely detecting safe regions as significant movements. The proposed tool offers ground motion-based outcomes that can be interpreted and utilized by experts to activate early alarms to reduce the consequences of possible failures in vulnerable infrastructures, such as mining areas. Three case studies in Spain, Brazil, and Australia, where fatal incidents happened, are analyzed by the proposed early alert detector to illustrate the impact of chosen temporal and spatial ranges. Since most early alarm systems are site dependent, we propose a general tool to be interpreted by experts for activating reliable alarms. The results show that the proposed tool can identify potential regions before collapse in all case studies. In addition, the tool can suggest an optimum selection of InSAR temporal (i.e., number of images) and spatial (i.e., adjacent measurement points) combinations based on the available SAR images and the characteristics of the study area.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Spatio-temporal quality indicators for differential interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar data

Satellite-based interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) is an invaluable technique in the detection and monitoring of changes on the surface of the earth. Its high spatial coverage, weather friendly and remote nature are among the advantages of the tool. The multi-temporal differential InSAR (DInSAR) methods in particular estimate the spatio-temporal evolution of deformation by incorporating information from multiple SAR images. Moreover, opportunities from the DInSAR techniques are accompanied by challenges that affect the final outputs. Resolving the inherent ambiguities of interferometric phases, especially in areas with a high spatio-temporal deformation gradient, represents the main challenge. This brings the necessity of quality indices as important DInSAR data processing tools in achieving ultimate processing outcomes. Often such indices are not provided with the deformation products. In this work, we propose four scores associated with (i) measurement points, (ii) dates of time series, (iii) interferograms and (iv) images involved in the processing. These scores are derived from a redundant set of interferograms and are calculated based on the consistency of the unwrapped interferometric phases in the frame of a least-squares adjustment. The scores reflect the occurrence of phase unwrapping errors and represent valuable input for the analysis and exploitation of the DInSAR results. The proposed tools were tested on 432,311 points, 1795 interferograms and 263 Sentinel-1 single look complex images by employing the small baseline technique in the PSI processing chain, PSIG of the geomatics division of the Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya (CTTC). The results illustrate the importance of the scores—mainly in the interpretation of the DInSAR outputs.This research was partially funded by the Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca (AGAUR), Generalitat de Catalunya—through a grant for the recruitment of early-stage research staff (Ref: 2021FI_B2 00186).Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

ELULC-10, a 10 m European land use and land cover map using Sentinel and landsat data in Google Earth Engine

Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) maps can be effectively produced by cost-effective and frequent satellite observations. Powerful cloud computing platforms are emerging as a growing trend in the high utilization of freely accessible remotely sensed data for LULC mapping over large-scale regions using big geodata. This study proposes a workflow to generate a 10 m LULC map of Europe with nine classes, ELULC-10, using European Sentinel-1/-2 and Landsat-8 images, as well as the LUCAS reference samples. More than 200 K and 300 K of in situ surveys and images, respectively, were employed as inputs in the Google Earth Engine (GEE) cloud computing platform to perform classification by an object-based segmentation algorithm and an Artificial Neural Network (ANN). A novel ANN-based data preparation was also presented to remove noisy reference samples from the LUCAS dataset. Additionally, the map was improved using several rule-based post-processing steps. The overall accuracy and kappa coefficient of 2021 ELULC-10 were 95.38% and 0.94, respectively. A detailed report of the classification accuracies was also provided, demonstrating an accurate classification of different classes, such as Woodland and Cropland. Furthermore, rule-based post processing improved LULC class identifications when compared with current studies. The workflow could also supply seasonal, yearly, and change maps considering the proposed integration of complex machine learning algorithms and large satellite and survey data.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Interferometric SAR deformation timeseries: a quality index

Estimating unknown absolute phase from a wrapped observation is a challenging and ill-posed problem that possibly leads to misinterpretation of interferometric SAR (InSAR) deformation results. In this study, we introduce a quality index to cluster post-phase unwrapping multi-master InSAR timeseries outputs based on the estimated phase residuals and redundancy of network of interferograms. The index is supposed to indicate the reliability of a timeseries, including the identification of persistent scatterers (PSs) possibly affected by phase unwrapping jumps. The algorithm was tested on two Sentinel-1 interferometric datasets with 622,991 and 95,398 PSs, generated from the PSI processing chain PSIG of the geomatics division of CTTC. Promising result have been achieved-especially in identifying erroneous PSs with phase unwrapping jumps. Along with existing temporal phase consistency checking algorithms, the approach could provide rich information toward a better interpretation of the deformation timeseries results.This work has been funded by AGAUR, Generalitat de Catalunya, in the framework of Resolution EMC/ 2459/2019, FI-2020.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version