Cloud-free mosaic for high-resolution satellite to support natural resources and disaster monitoring

Abstract

High-resolution satellite imageries have been widely used for many applications, including monitoring natural resources and disasters. Unfortunately, the existence of the cloud interferes with these activities. The small coverage of high-resolution satellite imageries is also needed to be extended to a larger coverage for monitoring large areas. A method for generating the cloud-free tile-based mosaic for high-resolution satellite images is proposed in this paper to address the issues, namely Mosaic Tile-Based (MTB). The basic idea of this method is to take advantage of the cloud cover information from multi-temporal high-resolution satellite images to select the best image with the minimum cloud cover. SPOT-6 and SPOT-7 pan-sharpened images are used to test the method’s reliability. First, each image is re-shaped becomes tiles and keeps the information of its acquisition date. Each tile image is then calculated and assessed based on its cloud cover. Tile image selection is conducted in the next step to select the best tile with the lowest percentage of the cloud cover. In the last step, a mosaic of each best tile is conducted to produce a cloud-free mosaic. As a result, the mosaic product has a minimum cloud cover and larger coverage. The proposed method has beneficial as it keeps the original acquisition date on each tile and is faster for image processing activities. Thus, this method can be used as an alternative method for generating cloud-free mosaic for high-resolution satellite images to support natural resources and disaster monitoring.