Classification of urban vegetation patterns from hyperspectral imagery: hybrid algorithm based on genetic algorithm tuned fuzzy support vector machine

Abstract

Hyperspectral imagery has been widely used in terrain classification for its high resolution. Urban vegetation, known as an essential part of the urban ecosystem, can be difficult to discern due to high similarity of spectral signatures among some land-cover classes. In this paper, we investigate a hybrid approach of the genetic-algorithm tuned fuzzy support vector machine (GA-FSVM) technique and apply it to urban vegetation classification from aerial hyperspectral urban imagery. The approach adopts the genetic algorithm to optimize parameters of support vector machine, and employs the K-nearest neighbor algorithm to calculate the membership function for each fuzzy parameter, aiming to reduce the effects of the isolated and noisy samples. Test data come from push-broom hyperspectral imager (PHI) hyperspectral remote sensing image which partially covers a corner of the Shanghai World Exposition Park, while PHI is a hyper-spectral sensor developed by Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics. Experimental results show the GA-FSVM model generates overall accuracy of 71.2%, outperforming the maximum likelihood classifier with 49.4% accuracy and the artificial neural network method with 60.8% accuracy. It indicates GA-FSVM is a promising model for vegetation classification from hyperspectral urban data, and has good advantage in the application of classification involving abundant mixed pixels and small samples problem.