OBIA to Detect Asbestos-Containing Roofs

Abstract

Asbestos was primarily a problem in certain industrial areas of Italy. A link between asbestos and pleural mesothelioma was discovered in the 1960s. Italy is not the only country with an asbestos problem. International interest in the subject has been heightened by studies conducted in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, World Trade Center attacks in New York, in which asbestos, primarily used for fire protection of large metal structures, spread over a region of several square kilometers in the form of fine dust because of the Twin Towers’ explosive collapse, inhaled by thousands of people. Despite long-known dangers, the number of asbestos-containing building roofs remains high in many countries. Many buildings in Italy still have roofs made of a cement-asbestos mixture, which was once popular due to the material’s mechanical strength and low cost. In this work, we used object classification to solve the problem of the true location of asbestos cement roofs, using cadastral data in vector format as a thematic layer within the segmentation procedure to obtain objects complete with property attributes as a result of segmentation, useful in determining who owns the buildings.