Synergistic Use of LiDAR and APEX Hyperspectral Data for High-Resolution Urban Land Cover Mapping

Land cover mapping of the urban environment by means of remote sensing remains a distinct challenge due to the strong spectral heterogeneity and geometric complexity of urban scenes. Airborne imaging spectroscopy and laser altimetry have each made remarkable contributions to urban mapping but synergistic use of these relatively recent data sources in an urban context is still largely underexplored. In this study a synergistic workflow is presented to cope with the strong diversity of materials in urban areas, as well as with the presence of shadow. A high-resolution APEX hyperspectral image and a discrete waveform LiDAR dataset covering the Eastern part of Brussels were made available for this research. Firstly, a novel shadow detection method based on LiDAR intensity-APEX brightness thresholding is proposed and compared to commonly used approaches for shadow detection. A combination of intensity-brightness thresholding with DSM model-based shadow detection is shown to be an efficient approach for shadow mask delineation. To deal with spectral similarity of different types of urban materials and spectral distortion induced by shadow cover, supervised classification of shaded and sunlit areas is combined with iterative LiDAR post-classification correction. Results indicate that height, slope and roughness features contribute to improved classification accuracies in descending order of importance. Results of this study illustrate the potential of synergistic application of hyperspectral imagery and LiDAR for urban land cover mapping.