Exploiting volunteered geographic information to ease land use mapping of an urban landscape

Abstract

Remote sensing techniques have eased land use/cover mapping substantially by observing the earth remotely through diminishing field surveying and in-site data collection. However, field measurement is still required to identify training sites for defining the existing land use classes, which requires visiting the study area. This paper is intended to utilize volunteered geographic information (VGI) contributions to the OpenStreetMap (OSM) project as an alternative data source instead of gathering training sites through insite visits and to evaluate how accurate land use patterns can be mapped. High resolution imagery of RapidEye with 5 meter spatial resolution is selected to derive land use patterns of Koblenz, Germany through a maximum likelihood classification technique. The achieved land use map is compared with the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security Urban Atlas (GMESUA) and a Kappa Index of 89% is achieved. The outcomes prove that VGI can be integrated within remote sensing processes to facilitate the process of earth observation and monitoring.