Several built-up indices have been proposed in the literature in order to extract the urban sprawl from satellite data. Given their relative simplicity and easy implementation, such methods have been widely adopted for urban growth monitoring. Previous research has shown that built-up indices are sensitive to different factors related to image resolution, seasonality, and study area location. Also, most of them confuse urban surfaces with bare soil and barren land covers. By gathering the existing built-up indices, the aim of this paper is to discuss some of their advantages, difficulties, and limitations. In order to illustrate our study, we provide some application examples using Sentinel 2A data.
In this research the Hurst exponent H is used for quantifying the fractal features of LANDSAT images. The Hurst exponent is estimated by means of the Detrending Moving Average (DMA), an algorithm based on a generalized high-dimensional variance around a moving average low-pass filter. Hence, for a two-dimensional signal, the algorithm first generates an average response for different subarrays by varying the size of the moving low-pass filter. For each subarray the corresponding variance value is calculated by the difference between the original and the averaged signals. The value of the variance obtained at each subarray is then plotted on log-log axes, with the slope of the regression line corresponding to the Hurst exponent. The application of the algorithm to a set of LANDSAT imagery has allowed us to estimate the Hurst exponent of specific areas on Earth surface at subsequent time instances. According to the presented results, the value of the Hurst exponent is directly related to the changes in land use, showing a decreasing value when the area under study has been modified by natural processes or human intervention. Interestingly, natural areas presenting a gradual growth of man made activities or an increasing degree of pollution have a considerable reduction in their corresponding Hurst exponent.
Lattice associative memories also known as morphological associative memories are fully connected feedforward neural networks with no hidden layers, whose computation at each node is carried out with lattice algebra operations. These networks are a relatively recent development in the field of associative memories that has proven to be an alternative way to work with sets of pattern pairs for which the storage and retrieval stages use minimax algebra. Different associative memory models have been proposed to cope with the problem of pattern recall under input degradations, such as occlusions or random noise, where input patterns can be composed of binary or real valued entries. In comparison to these and other artificial neural network memories, lattice algebra based memories display better performance for storage and recall capability; however, the computational techniques devised to achieve that purpose require additional processing or provide partial success when inputs are presented with undetermined noise levels. Robust retrieval capability of an associative memory model is usually expressed by a high percentage of perfect recalls from non-perfect input. The procedure described here uses noise masking defined by simple lattice operations together with appropriate metrics, such as the normalized mean squared error or signal to noise ratio, to boost the recall performance of either the min or max lattice autoassociative memories. Using a single lattice associative memory, illustrative examples are given that demonstrate the enhanced retrieval of correct gray-scale image associations from inputs corrupted with random noise.
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