The Thematic Information Extraction from Polinsar Data for Urban Planning and Management

The aim of this study is to demonstrate the use of Pi-SAR (polarimetric and interferometric synthetic aperture radar) data for the extraction of different thematic information for urban planning and management. For this end, different relief topography related thematic information as well as a land cover map are generated from the Pi-SAR data. The thematic maps related to terrain topography are generated from the interferometric information by applying standard procedures, while for the generation of the land cover map, a refined classification algorithm, which integrates both polarimetric and interferometric information is developed. The refined method is based on a hierarchical rule-based approach and it uses a hierarchy of rules describing different conditions under which the actual classification has to be performed. The result of the developed method was compared with the result obtained by the traditional statistical maximum likelihood classification (MLC). It was indicated that Pi-SAR data can be used for generation of different terrain topography related thematic information and the rule-based method containing well constructed rules is a powerful tool in the production of an accurate land cover map. * Corresponding author