Multiscale Advanced Raster Map Analysis for Sustainable Environment and Development Using Remote Sensing Data

Remote sensing has been a vastly under-utilized resource involving a multi million dollar investment. Even when utilized, the credibility has been at stake, largely because of lack of tools that can assess, visualize, and communicate accuracy and reliability in real time and at desired confidence levels. Consider an imminent scenario: What message does a remote sensing-derived landcover landuse map have about the large landscape it represents? And at what scale?...Does the spatial pattern of the map reveal any societal, ecological, environmental condition of the landscape? And therefore can it be an indicator of change?...How do you automate the assessment of the spatial structure and behavior of change to discover critical areas and hot spots?...Is the map accurate? How accurate is it? How do you assess the accuracy of the map? Of the change map over time for change detection? What are the implications of the kind and amount of change and accuracy on what matters, whether climate change, carbon emission, or water resources? And with what confidence?...The proposed presentation will explore answers to these questions and a few more that involve multicategorical raster maps based on remote sensing and other geospatial data. Prepared with partial support from the United States Environmental Protection Agency Cooperative Agreement Number CR-825506. The contents have not been subjected to Agency review and therefore do not necessarily reflect the views of the Agencies and no official endorsement should be inferred Invited paper at the Workshop on Tools for Understanding Landscape Patterns in Coastal Areas Induced by Industrialization, Trieste, Italy, September 2000 under the auspices of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization