LAND COVER/LAND USE CLASSIFICATION BASED ON DECISION

TREE APPROACH
ABHISHEK A B
M.Tech Student, Dept. of ECE, VCET, Puttur, Karnataka, 574203, India

Dr. SHIVAPRAKSAH KOLIWAD

Professor, Dept. of ECE, VCET, Puttur, Karnataka, 574203, India

Prof. SRIKRISHNA SHASTRI C

Professor and Head, Dept. of ECE, VCET, Puttur, Karnataka, 574203, India

ABSTRACT: For change detection and monitoring, accurate and reliable information about LC
(land cover) and LU (land use) is needed. It is used in increasing the geographical information
about the area. Change Detection is a technique used in remote sensing that compares images of an
area and emphasizes the changes that have occurred over a time period. In this work, Decision
Tree approach is chosen for the classification. The Decision Tree is expected to classify the
remotely sensed data into pre-defined classes efficiently. In this work, multispectral and
panchromatic image data is used as input for classification purpose. Classification accuracy is
improved by performing classification based on the Decision Tree. The traditional parametric hard
classification techniques expect the data to follow a Gaussian distribution. They perform poorly on
high resolution satellite images. This is because, classes of these images exhibit large overlapping
in spectral space. This leads to inaccurate classified images due to spectral confusion among the
classes. In the present study, generation of classification rules from the spatial data using non-
parametric decision tree is discussed. The classification accuracy is more than 70% using the
Decision Tree method.

KEYWORDS: Decision Tree Classifier (DTC), Remote Sensing (RS), Image Classification, Land
Cover (LC), Land Use (LU).

INTRODUCTION

Land-cover/Land-use is one of the upcoming concepts of remote sensing technology. Using

remotely sensed data, it is possible to monitor the changes of land-cover/land-use effectively. The
land cover information has to be updated periodically, because the geospatial situations are
changing over time. For various planning authorities and managing different territories, up-to-date
knowledge of land cover/land use is important.

Classification of a remotely sensed (RS) image is an iterative process in which each pixel of image
is assigned to one of the many predefined land cover/land use classes. The goal of image
classification is to make full use of the spectral, spatial and temporal resolution of data and other
characteristics to get more reliable and accurate classification. In order to transform remotely
sensed data into thematic maps, multispectral image classification is one of the most widely used
techniques.
The unique relationship between different materials and their reflected radiation at a particular
wavelength of the spectral band of an image is used as the basis for the classification of RS data,
i.e., each pixel of the image is assigned to a particular class. Image classification can be performed
using various approaches such as supervised classification, unsupervised classification, fuzzy logic
based classification and classification using ancillary data. Supervised and unsupervised
classification belongs to hard classifiers. In supervised classification, to assign a pixel into a proper
class, various algorithms are used. These algorithms can be divided into two general subgroups
according to the distribution of the classes. They are parametric and non-parametric.
The parametric classifiers examine only the spectral variance ignoring the spatial distribution of
the pixels in the RS data. Because of mixed pixel problem, they perform poorly on high resolution
satellite images. By increasing the spatial resolution of the satellite images, the spectral values of
the pixels tend to overlap. Of the parametric classification techniques, the Maximum Likelihood
Classifier (MLC) is widely used for extracting thematic information from RS images which
performs on a uni-temporal image and gives good results. However, when classes have similar
reflectance characteristics, using a uni-temporal image will lead to miss-classified results.
To overcome this, knowledge based non parametric classification technique is used. They do not
depend on the way in which the data is distributed. Hence adding of non-spectral values into
classification procedure is possible. In this method, automated interpretation process takes the
experts knowledge along with other attributes organized in a knowledge base as input and leads to
increased classification accuracy. Therefore, knowledge-based image interpretation systems arise
as an effective tool for image interpretation. Some of the methodologies are Artificial Neural
Network (ANN), Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Decision Tree Classification (DTC). ANN
and SVM exhibit higher accuracy, whereas they are relatively slow compared to that of Decision
Tree Classifier (DTC). As the size of the training data increases the training period is increased.
When compared to other classifiers Decision Tree Classifier is easy to train and training is faster
compared to other classifiers.
In this work Decision Tree approach is adopted to classify a multispectral (MS) satellite image.
The C4.5 classification algorithm proposed by J Quinlin has been used to build the tree. Accuracy
assessment is performed over the classified image using Overall Classification Accuracy (OCA)
and Kappa Statistics.

DECISION TREE CLASSIFIER

The Decision Tree (DT) is one of the algorithms proposed to counteract the in-capabilities of
traditional approaches in resolving inter-class confusions. Decision Tree generates classification
tree using the training data/samples. It is based on a set of binary tests applied at each node of the
tree to repetitively split a dataset into smaller groups until further subdivision is not possible. The
resulting decision tree is a representation of the concept which is self-evident and easily
understandable by humans.

DT is a hierarchical tree structure where at each node a binary test is made on the attributes of the
pixel and it results in one of the two outcomes. To classify a pixel or an object in the RS data, it
starts from the root node of the tree, evaluate the binary test and depending on the outcome take
appropriate branch. Binary test result will lead either to another internal node, for which a new test
condition is applied or to a leaf node. The process is continued till a leaf node is reached. At this
point the leaf class to which an object or pixel belong is decided. Every final leaf is a result of

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number of binary rules applied at every node. The tree is expanded till all the training instances are
correctly classified.

Decision tree classification has the ability to handle non-linear relations between features and
classes. Hence it has great advantages for land use/land cover classification. The Decision Tree
classifiers are unstable when feature space and training areas are changed; this is the major
drawback of DTC.

The decision tree algorithm is as follows:

Let X be a training set of objects, each belonging to one of the k classes denoted{C1, C2,,Ck},
then
If X contains one or more objects which all belong to a single class Cj, then the decision tree is a
leaf identifying class Cj.
If X contains no objects, the decision tree is a leaf determined from the information other than X.
If X contains objects that belong to a mixture of classes, then a test, T is chosen, based on a
single attribute that has one or more mutually exclusive outcomes {O1,O2,,On}. Each object
in X has one outcome for T so the test partitions X into subsets X1, X2,,Xn, where each object
in Xi has outcome Oi for the chosen test T. T becomes the root of the decision tree and for each
outcome Oi, a subsidiary decision tree is built by invoking the same procedure recursively on
the set Xi.

In this study, the J4.8 algorithm has been used for learning and induction of classification rules
from pruned partial Decision Trees are built using C4.5s heuristics. Information gain ratio is
taken as the criterion for attribute splitting.

Figure 1. Decision Tree Model

DECISION TREE INDUCER ALGORITHM

C4.5 Decision tree inducer algorithm is an evolution of ID3 algorithm (Quinlan, 1993). C4.5
builds decision trees from a set of training data in the same way as ID3, Information gain ratio is
used as splitting criteria. The splitting stops when the number of instances to be split is below a

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certain threshold. Errorbased pruning is performed after the growing phase. C4.5 has the ability
to handle numeric attributes. At each node of the tree, the attribute of the data which effectively
splits the sample into a subset of a class is chosen. In C4.5 an attribute with highest normalized
information gain is selected to make decisions. Information gain is an impurity-based criterion that
uses the entropy measure (origin from information theory) as the impurity measure (Quinlan,
1987).
ai vi , j S
InformationGain(ai , S ) Entropy( y, S )
v i , j dom ( a i ) S
Entropy( y, ai vi , j s ) (1)

y c j S yc j S (2)
Entropy ( y, S )
c j dom ( y )

S
. log 2
S

The gain ratio normalizes the information gain as follows (Quinlan, 1993):
Informationgain(a i , S ) (3)
Gainratio(a i , S )
Entropy (a i , S )

This ratio is not defined if the denominator is zero. Also the ratio may tend to favor attributes for
which the denominator is very small. For each nodal decision a threshold is used and it is selected
using minimum error measures.

In this algorithm, pruning method used is Error Based Pruning (EBP). Training set is used for
building and simplifying trees. After a decision tree is produced by the divide and conquer
algorithm, C4.5 prunes it in a single bottom-up pass. The C4.5 algorithm incorporates missing
values in the training data by using corrected gain ratio criteria. J4.8 algorithm is Java
implementation of C4.5 algorithm.

This algorithm is used in this work for learning and induction of classification rules from pruned
partial Decision Tree built using C4.5. Let T be a non-leaf decision tree, produced from a training
set S, of the form:

Where each Ti* has already been pruned. Further, let Tf* be the sub-tree corresponding to the most
frequent outcome of B, and let L be a leaf labeled with the most frequent class in S. Let the number
of cases in S misclassified by T, Tf*, and L be ET, ETf*, and EL respectively. C4.5's tree pruning
algorithm considers the three corresponding estimated error rates, UCF (ET, |S|), UCF (EL, |S|), and
UCF (ETf*, |S|). Depending on whichever is lower, C4.5, leaves T unchanged, replaces T by the leaf
L or replaces T by its sub tree Tf*. This is the efficient form of pruning and it gives quite
reasonable results in most cases.

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DATA CHARACTERISTICS

The satellite data used for the present study is LISS III sensor image of IRS-P6. It is a
multispectral data having band resolution of Green: (0.52-0.59m); Red: (0.62-0.68m); Infrared:
(0.77-0.86m) and a spatial resolution of 2.5m.

The area considered for classification is a semi urban area with geographical co-ordinates Latitude
13 00 58.27 N and 13 00 08.86 N, Longitude 74 47 14.85 E and 74 48 09.42 E. It has an average
elevation of 3 meters from sea level. It has a good mixture of spectrally overlapping classes
comprising of manmade structures and natural land cover features. It is ensured that area
considered for verification contains at least 6 classes, more number of classes in the study area will
be an added advantage for better classification.

To implement the project work Hard Classifier is used.

Table 1. Details of Satellite Data Used in the Study

Satellite and Band Spatial Wavelength
Data Type Resolution (m)
(m)
IRS P-4 Infrared 2.5 0.76 0.90
Multi Spectral Red 2.5 0.62 0.68
Green 2.5 0.52 0.60

METHODODLOGY

Pre-processing of the satellite data is the first step in classification. Geo-referencing of satellite
data is done to align the satellite data according to the real world co-ordinates. This process is
known as geometric correction. The spectral values of pixels of the RS data are used to prepare
training data sets. Generation of the tree is done using WEKA data mining tool. This tool
generates the classification rules required. J4.8 algorithm is used in this tool to generate
classification rules.

For training the data set, a ten-fold cross validation is used. The generated rules are implemented
on the RS data using ERDAS IMAGINE 9.2 image processing tool. In order to implement the
classification rules, a classification knowledge base is created and using this knowledge base DTC
is carried out. Totally twelve classes were defined in this work and their signature file was created.
Accuracy assessment was carried out to know how accurate the process is working.

ANALYSIS AND RESULTS

The results obtained after carrying out the classification on the selected area is discussed in this
section. The training sample consisting of 320 instances was fed into the J4.8 decision tree
algorithm to generate classification rules. A total of 26 rules were generated. Some of the rules
generated are:
If red <=33 and red<=8 _ SEA WATER
If red <=33 and red > 8 and blue<=34and blue <=30_ SHEET_ROOF
If red <=33 and red > 8 and blue>34and red<=25_ POOL WATER

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A knowledge base was created using these classification rules. This knowledge base is applied on
the RS image to obtain DT classified image. Accuracy assessment was carried out over the
classified image. The overall classification accuracy and kappa statistics were evaluated. The OCA
obtained was 69.37% and the kappa statistics obtained was 0.6642. From the results, it can be
noticed that there is more misclassification seen in the class roof_rcc and veg_coconut.
Misclassification is noticed due to the highly overlapping spectral values due to the shadow of
trees.

From the classified images and conditional kappa values it is clear that few of the classes like
sand, grass_dry and water_sea have shown very good results. The classes which have uniform
distribution over the study area have been classified correctly, whereas those classes which are
scattered have not been classified correctly. DTC is easy to analyze, the rules generated are simple
to understand and implement. Also the computation time required for training the test sample is
less than the time required for the same in other approaches. In an overall analysis almost all the
classes perform better under DTC.

CONCLUSION

In this paper, Decision Tree classification approach is developed to classify remotely sensed
satellite data and implemented. The reason for high accuracy to some extent may be attributed to
the fact that the part of the training set is being considered as ground truths instead of actual data.
DTC can be trained quickly and it also requires less computational time. It can be concluded from
the study that Decision Tree classification algorithm perform better as DTC does not depend on a
prior model, it is dynamic in nature. But the problem associated with Decision Tree is that, they
are unstable when the feature space or the training data is changed. Larger the training set, greater
is the accuracy achieved. The accuracy of the results depends only upon the test set selected; the
efficiency of any algorithm should not be decided on the accuracy measure alone.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It is our pleasure to recognize the individuals who have helped us in making this technical paper. I
gratefully express heartiest thanks to Dr Ashok Kumar T (Principal, PESIT Shimoga) and Mr.
Jayanth J (Asst. Prof. G.S.S.S.I.E.T.W, Mysore) for all the guidance, encouragement and analysis
of the work throughout this process.

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