Novel approach of association rule mining for tree canopy assessment

Abstract

The evolution of technology and availability of voluminous satellite images are bringing a new scenario in satellite image classification where a performance efficient method for predictive analysis of satellite images for land cover classification needs to be devised. As urban areas are growing at faster rate, special attention needs to be given to solve tree canopy assessment problem. Vegetation indices are calculated from spectral information of satellite images. Hundreds of such vegetation indices are available to detect vegetation from a satellite image. The contribution of this paper is designing an improved Apriori algorithm to select optimal number of vegetation indices for tree canopy assessment. In this research, we propose a novel computational approach that allows the improvement of results. It selects optimal combination of vegetation indices and applies principal component analysis on it. It uses a greedy approach based on Apriori algorithm. This study emphasizes on assessment of tree canopy using GPU-enabled environment for performance-efficient assessment. The results achieved, are comparable to state-of-the-art techniques, with an accuracy of 96%. The research has considered 4 years data for Mumbai city of India. This research is useful for Green India Mission of India to assess tree canopy of urban region.