Object-based change detection

Characterizations of land-cover dynamics are among the most important applications of Earth observation data, providing insights into management, policy and science. Recent progress in remote sensing and associated digital image processing offers unprecedented opportunities to detect changes in land cover more accurately over increasingly large areas, with diminishing costs and processing time. The advent of high-spatial-resolution remote-sensing imagery further provides opportunities to apply change detection with object-based image analysis (OBIA), that is, object-based change detection (OBCD). When compared with the traditional pixel-based change paradigm, OBCD has the ability to improve the identification of changes for the geographic entities found over a given landscape. In this article, we present an overview of the main issues in change detection, followed by the motivations for using OBCD as compared to pixel-based approaches. We also discuss the challenges caused by the use of objects in change detection and provide a conceptual overview of solutions, which are followed by a detailed review of current OBCD algorithms. In particular, OBCD offers unique approaches and methods for exploiting high-spatial-resolution imagery, to capture meaningful detailed change information in a systematic and repeatable manner, corresponding to a wide range of information needs.