Depiction of uncertainty in the visually interpreted land cover data

Abstract

Remote sensing data analysis to infer land cover and the subsequent modelling of land use change are subject to uncertainties, which may have an impact on the accuracy of future land-use predictions. Part of these uncertainties come from the visual interpretation of remote sensing data as during this phase a specific knowledge and expertise are crucial. Visual interpretation includes the meaning of the image content but also goes beyond what can be seen on the image to recognize spatial and landscape patterns. The quality of recognition depends on the expertise in image interpretation and visual perception. Based on this statement, it is necessary to visualize also the information about uncertainty. This paper describes different perspectives of uncertainty visualization on the example of visually interpreted aerial photographs in a mining area. The study is focused on visualization techniques for uncertainty awareness analysis of land cover data. This approach should contribute to better understanding, assessment and potential spreading of visual information of uncertainty and help to appraise the data critically. The goal of this paper is to raise uncertainty awareness among practitioners who deal with land cover data and stress the visualizations techniques as a more reliable means to assess the quality, and hence the uncertainty, of these data.