Assessing the performance of two unsupervised dimensionality reduction techniques on hyperspectral APEX data for high resolution urban land-cover mapping

Despite the high richness of information content provided by airborne hyperspectral data, detailed urban land-cover mapping is still a challenging task. An important topic in hyperspectral remote sensing is the issue of high dimensionality, which is commonly addressed by dimensionality reduction techniques. While many studies focus on methodological developments in data reduction, less attention is paid to the assessment of the proposed methods in detailed urban hyperspectral land-cover mapping, using state-of-the-art image classification approaches. In this study we evaluate the potential of two unsupervised data reduction techniques, the Autoassociative Neural Network (AANN) and the BandClust method – the first a transformation based approach, the second a feature-selection based approach – for mapping of urban land cover at a high level of thematic detail, using an APEX 288-band hyperspectral dataset. Both methods were tested in combination with four state-of-the-art machine learning classifiers: Random Forest (RF), AdaBoost (ADB), the multiple layer perceptron (MLP), and support vector machines (SVM). When used in combination with a strong learner (MLP, SVM) BandClust produces classification accuracies similar to or higher than obtained with the full dataset, demonstrating the method’s capability of preserving critical spectral information, required for the classifier to successfully distinguish between the 22 urban land-cover classes defined in this study. In the AANN data reduction process, on the other hand, important spectral information seems to be compromised or lost, resulting in lower accuracies for three of the four classifiers tested. Detailed analysis of accuracies at class level confirms the superiority of the SVM/Bandclust combination for accurate urban land-cover mapping using a reduced hyperspectral dataset. This study also demonstrates the potential of the new APEX sensor data for detailed mapping of land cover in spatially and spectrally complex urban areas.