Comparison of Machine Learning Algorithms Random Forest, Artificial Neural Network and Support Vector Machine to Maximum Likelihood for Supervised Crop Type Classification

The classification and recognition of agricultural crop types is an important application of remote sensing. New machine learning algorithms have emerged in the last years, but so far, few studies only have compared their performance and usability. Therefore, we compared three different state-of-the-art machine learning classifiers, namely Support Vector Machine (SVM), Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Random Forest (RF) as well as the traditional classification method Maximum Likelihood (ML) among each other. For this purpose we classified a dataset of more than 500 crop fields located in the Canadian Prairies with a stratified randomized sampling approach. Up to four multi-spectral RapidEye images from the 2009 growing season were used. We compared the mean overall classification accuracies as well as standard deviations. Furthermore, the classification accuracy of single crops was analysed. Support Vector Machine classifiers using radial basis function or polynomial kernels exhibited superior results to ANN and RF in terms of overall accuracy and robustness, while ML exhibited inferior accuracies and higher variability. Grassland exhibited the best results for early-season mono-temporal analysis. With a multi-temporal approach, the highest accuracies were achieved for Rapeseed and Field Peas. Other crops, such as Wheat, Flax and Lentils were also successfully classified. The user’s and producer’s accuracies were higher than 85 %.