Holdout based blending approaches for improved satellite image classification

Abstract

An essential component of remote sensing, image analysis, and pattern recognition is image categorization. The classification of land use using remotely sensed data creates a map-like representation as the final form of the investigation. With its ability to effectively categorize satellite images, machine learning (ML) algorithms have gained significant traction in a number of fields, including land-use planning, disaster response, and natural resource management. Ensemble learning is also a widely used technique for enhancing the precision of satellite image categorization, which combines multiple models to get more precise predictions. Holdout is an ensemble technique, where multiple ML algorithms are used for training on the same dataset. The primary goal of this study is to create a holdout model for classifying satellite images. Initially, this study explores the usage of ML algorithms namely support vector machines (SVM), k-nearest neighbor (KNN), decision trees (DT), gradient boosting classifier (GBC), histogram-based GBC (HGBC), random forest classifier (RF), bagging classifier (BC), XGBoost classifier for classifying satellite images. Later, GBC, HGBC, RF, BC, and XGBoost are combined to build a stacking model. The bagging ensemble model outperforms all other methods and reaches an accuracy of 88.90%. Finally, blending models with holdout approach were developed and achieved accuracy of 93.70%, 94.14%, and 93.87% which outperformed all previous algorithms.