Urban land-use classification using variogram-based analysis with an aerial photograph

In this study, a variogram-based texture analysis was tested for classifying detailed urban land-use classes, such as mobile home, single-family house, multi-family house, industrial, and commercial from a digital color infrared aerial photograph. Spectral classification was first carried out to separate the building class from non-building classes. Then, a building-presence binary image was generated so that building pixels were assigned a value of "1" and non-building pixels were assigned a value of "0." Multiple texture bands were further generated employing a variogram-based texture analysis and used for land-use classification. The generation of the building presence binary image allowed us not only to fully explore the capability of variogram-based analysis on spatial pattern detection, but also to prevent the variogram-based analysis from being disturbed by the natural fluctuation of spectral signals. The result from using a mosaic test image was considered satisfactory with a kappa coefficient of 0.72.