Spatial metrics and image texture for mapping urban land use

The arrival of new-generation, high-spatial-resolution satellite imagery (e.g., Ikonos) has opened up new opportunities for detailed mapping and analysis of urban land use. Drawing on the traditional approach used in aerial photointerpretation, this study investigates an object-oriented method to classify a large urban area into detailed land-use categories. Spatial metrics and texture measures are used to describe the spatial characteristics of land-cover objects within each land-use region as derived from interpreted aerial photographs. In assessing how land-use categories vary in their spatial configuration, spatial metrics were found to provide the most important information for differentiating urban land uses. A detailed land-use map with nine categories was derived for the Santa Barbara South Coast Region area. Results from our work suggest that the region-based method exploiting spatial metrics and texture measurements is a potential new avenue to extract detailed urban land-use information from high-resolution satellite imagery.