EXTRACTING LANDSCAPE FEATURES IN EMERGENCY

RESPONSE SITUATIONS: COMBINING FUZZY LOGIC AND

GAUSSIAN STATISTICS IN OBJECT-ORIENTED ANALYSIS
Mueller N, Tan P and Lymburner L
Geoscience Australia
GPO Box 378
Canberra ACT 2601
(02) 6249 9111, (02) 6249 9999
norman.mueller@ga.gov.au

Abstract
The response to emergency situations such as floods and fires demand
products in short time frames. If you use remote sensing then the response
typically involves detailed examination of imagery in order to determine the
spectral bands, ratios and associated thresholds that map the desired features
such as flood or burn extent. The trial and error process associated with
manual threshold selection is often time consuming and can result in significant
errors due to confounding factors such as clouds and shadowed areas. By
modelling features such as flood waters or fire scars as Gaussian distributions,
allowing for fuzzy thresholds with neighbouring features, the required thresholds
can be automatically derived from the imagery and emergency events can have
extents determined much more rapidly. Automatic threshold selection
minimises trial and error, thereby dramatically reducing processing turn-around
time.
This paper describes the implementation of fuzzy logic and Gaussian modelling
using a seed-and-grow method in a Definiens object-oriented environment in
two emergency response applications. It has produced flood extent maps from
both MODIS and Landsat 5 satellite imagery in under 30 minutes with little user
intervention, the outputs of which have been used by the NSW SES to assist in
planning medical and food drops for flood affected communities. The method
has also been applied to burn scar mapping for the 2009 Victorian bushfires.
The methodology presented in this paper addresses one of the key bottlenecks
in the emergency response application of image processing.

Introduction
The methodology described in this paper arose from a need to automatically
extract features from satellite imagery. These features might be flood water,
burn scars, or typical land cover features such as grassland or forest. The need
was driven by requests to produce flood or burn extents from satellite imagery
as quickly as possible. There are two fundamental challenges in producing the
extent of flooding and or bush fire scars. The first challenge is that the target of
interest may have similar spectral characteristics to non-target areas. The

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second challenge is that both bushfires and floods typically have indistinct
edges that result in mixture gradients rather than well defined boundaries. For
example, an area subject to flooding will have pixels that contain only water,
pixels that contain mixtures of open water and vegetation, pixels that contain
mixtures of bare soil and water and pixels that contain mixtures of water,
vegetation and bare soil. Likewise areas that have been subject to bushfire will
contain pixels where all green vegetation has been burnt, but other pixels will
contain a combination of green and burnt vegetation. These mixture gradients
are made even more complex by variations in optical water quality and soil
colour. Examples of the mixtures between the desirable and undesirable
features are shown in Figures 1 and 2.
Our solution is to find a general threshold that consistently describes the “core”
of the desired feature, e.g. complete inundation, or total canopy and understory
burn, from which the full extents can be computed using a Gaussian model
“grown” out from the core. Modelling natural features using Gaussian
distributions is well established in many fields including voice and photographic
processing. It is seldom used in remote sensing image processing, however
Gaussian mixture modelling has been shown to be an effective natural feature
classification tool (Xiong, Zhang and Jiang, 2009).
Transitions where the target feature mixes with confounding features are
modelled using fuzzy classes. At the extremes of the model, features are
classified as “bookend” classes, defining where the class transition from target
feature to confounding feature has finished, preventing further growth of the
model.

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 Figure 1: An example of flooding of northern NSW in early 2010. The portion of the
Landsat image covering this area during the flood contains a high proportion of pixels
whose reflectance charcteristics are a mixture of water, vegetation and soil. Fuzzy
classification provides a tool to model the nature of the mixed pixels.

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Figure 2: An example of a burnt forest area from the Victorian fires of 2009. This stand
of trees shows areas that are completely burnt, with no canopy remaining, and areas
where the canopy still exists and shows some greenness. The changing severity of the
burn across the area leads to large variation in the content of the mixed pixels imaged
by the satellite.

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Methodology
The seed and grow methodology is an iterative process and can be
implemented using a looped approach or a linear step approach of similar tasks
of classification and reclassification. A flowchart of the looped approach is
shown in Figure 3.
The creation of the model and analysis system follows five general steps:
1. A general threshold must be found that will repeatably find the core of
the feature in the imagery.
2. The imagery is segmented and all objects that may contain the core of
the feature are identified.
3. The objects that possibly have the feature are broken up and statistically
analysed to form a Gaussian distribution based on the mean and 1.97
standard deviations.
4. The objects classified as the feature are reclassified according to the
proportions of the content of confounding features using fuzzy class
functions.
5. All areas classified as being entirely or partially comprised of the feature
are reclassified according to the fuzzy class functions using the final,
scene-wide statistics.

Deriving a General Threshold

Applying time series analysis to a set of satellite images containing the same
feature is a useful approach for deriving a repeatable threshold to define the
core of a feature. Water is easily identified by its absorption of short-wave infra-
red radiation (Frazier and Page, 2000). Using Landsat data, if the minimum
band 5 values for a set of images are stacked as a time series, a bimodal
histogram is produced showing a low-end peak for open or pure water and a
much larger mid to high range peak for land. The open water peak is found at
approximately 5% reflectance. The water content diminishes as band 5
approaches 15% reflectance.
Similarly, repeated observations of a feature in other imagery can provide the
necessary pure feature values. The word „pure‟ in this context refers to a pixel
that contains only water, with no vegetation or other terrestrial targets present.
Note that a „pure‟ water pixel can still have a wide range of spectral responses
as determined by the inherent optical properties of the water bodies. The value
corresponding to pure is used as a seed value, providing the initial data to find
the core of the feature. The approximate reflectance value where the content of
the pixels transition to a confounding class provides the initial edge value to
restrict the growth of the model.

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Figure 3: Flowchart of the model applied in a looped process to find a feature and its transitions to other, confounding features.

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The method can be applied to burn scars using the Normalised Burn Ratio
(NBR) (Lopez-Garcia and Caselles, 1991). When used in a 2-scene change
detection between the burnt scene and a pre-burn scene the NBR provides a
very useful index. The NBR is defined as:

NBR 
TM 4  TM 7
TM 4  TM 7
where TM4 is Landsat band 4 (near infra-red), and TM7 is Landsat band 7
(short-wave infra-red).
Areas where the NBR values have increased dramatically in contrast to the pre-
fire image are used to provide the seed values, while observations of the NBR
values where the burn transitions to unburnt provide the edge values.

Segmentation and Definition of the Area of Interest

Image segmentation using a Definiens multiresolution approach provides a
simple starting point to break an image into useful, analysable objects (Benz et
al, 2004). Once an image is segmented each object is tested against the
feature edge value to find which objects may contain the feature. By identifying
possible feature objects the processing time is reduced as large areas of a
scene that don‟t contain the feature of interest are removed from the analysis.

Building the Gaussian Model for the Feature

Each candidate object containing the feature is broken into single-pixel objects
to allow pixel-based processing in an object-oriented framework. The pixel
objects are tested against the input seed value to find the feature seeds. Each
pixel object adjacent to a seed or another feature object is then tested against
the edge value to find more of the feature. This is an iterative process, looping
until either no more pixel objects are available or no pixel objects meeting the
values can be found.
Analysis of a standard normal distribution shows that the mean ± 1.97 standard
deviations represents approximately 98% of the distribution. Hence applying the
1.97 multiplier results in conservatively capturing the entire set. To develop the
model the pixel objects classified as the feature are statistically analysed to find
their mean and standard deviation. The eventual target is for the seed value to
be modelled as the feature mean and the edge value as the mean ± 1.97
standard deviations.
This model continues to be built as the process loops through each object.
Each subsequent object to be analysed is tested against the original seed value
and the changing edge value until no possible objects remain. Following this a
second pass is executed where new possible candidates are tested against the
target model having the mean as the seed and mean ± 1.97 standard
deviations as the edge, until the possible feature objects are once again
exhausted. In this way the analysis starts from a conservative “guess” and
proceeds to be increasingly well defined by the discovered feature objects.

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Refining the Feature Classes According to Fuzzy Functions
Classifying the feature into various degrees of “purity” allows modelling of the
mixtures between the feature and its surroundings. In the case of water this
provides classes defining mixtures with vegetation or bare areas. The output
classes then provide an understanding of the flooded features. In the case of
burn scar mapping this provides classes defining various degrees of burn
severity inferred from the magnitude of the remaining vegetation signal
observed in the burnt area.
More importantly building a model without making allowances for mixtures is
relatively unconstrained and may become mathematically divergent and result
in the model developing to unacceptable values. To constrain the model, the
most common confounding features are modelled as influencing factors in a set
of fuzzy functions. In the case of water the simplest two undesirable features
are vegetation and soil, which may be modelled using NDVI for vegetation and
longer SWIR wavelengths (such as Landsat band 7) for soils. A series of
classes is created with functions in the key spectral bands defining how each
band or ratio changes with the changing values of the data. As the SWIR
reflectance increases the corresponding changes in NDVI and longer SWIR
determines whether the feature is still pure water, a mixture of features or the
“bookend” class of soil or vegetation. The fuzzy classification system within
Definiens compares the fuzzy functions of the classes according to the values
of the object and assigns the object the class having the highest classification
value. The bookend classes are then excluded from the statistical analysis and
the model is constrained.

Reclassification of all Previously Classified Objects

Since the feature evolves throughout the modelling process the model changes
according to how many feature objects are discovered in the image. To ensure
the model acts consistently across the entire image, the process is repeated by
reclassifying all objects according to the final values derived by the model. The
seed is modelled as the mean of all features except the bookend classes and
the edge is modelled as the mean ± 1.97 standard deviations.

More Generic Implementation for Multiple Features

Instead of modelling for a single feature mixing with confounding features the
methodology extends into multiple target features by finding basic seeds for
each feature and then computing a model for each simultaneously. The feature
edges computed using the mean ± 1.97 standard deviations approach then
form the limits of multiple Gaussian distributions to be compared in the fuzzy
classification process.
The looped approach was applied to several satellite images during the 2009
and 2010 floods in Queensland and New South Wales, and the 2009 bushfires
in Victoria. The analysed images included Landsat 5 imagery of the Paroo River
in northern New South Wales, acquired on 16 th January 2010, and the Victorian
bushfires, acquired on 17th February 2009. The model was implemented in a
Definiens Enterprise Server environment using 5 processing engines in parallel.

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Results
The requirement for the Paroo River scene was the extraction of the extent of
flood water. A subset of the image and associated classification result from the
model are shown in Figure 4.
The model detected water bodies or continuous streams repeatably and
reliably. Further analysis of neighbouring scenes showed that the results are
directly comparable between images, with flood events across multiple scenes
producing consistent extents. The fuzzy classes provide information on flooded
features which we interpreted as indicating the presence of mud or water
hidden by vegetation.
However the model generally underestimates the water where channels
become very thin compared to the resolution of the sensor, or the reflectance
values for a feature in the imagery exceed the modelled seed thresholds. In
these areas feature seeds are not formed so the model cannot grow. It is
possible that the water depth in these features is so shallow that the band 5
reflectance is dominated by non-water features. Processing time from the start
of the model to the creation of the output as an ArcGIS shapefile was
approximately 20 minutes.
The requirement for the Victorian bushfire scene was the extraction of the total
burnt area. Processing time was similar to the Paroo flood imagery at
approximately 20 minutes. A subset of the image and associated classification
result from the model are shown in Figure 5. The result shows that the model
generally underestimates the burnt area where the burn was the least intense.
However it does provide a class distinction between where the fire burned the
canopy completely and where the canopy remained after the fire.

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 Figure 4: Subset of the Landsat 5 imagery acquired over the Paroo River on 16th
January 2010. The top panel shows the original image displayed as bands 5, 4 and 2
as Red, Green and Blue. The bottom panel shows the results of the water detection
model with dark blue areas as open water, green areas as a water-vegetation mix and
yellow areas as a water-soil mix. The fuzzy classification of the water has highlighted
the flooded vegetation in the main water body, and shown the soil-water mixture in
several of the shallow areas in the lower part of the image.

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Figure 5: Subset of the Landsat 5 imagery acquired over the burn area of the Victorian
Fires on 17th February 2009. The top panel shows the original image displayed as
bands 5, 4 and 2 as Red, Green and Blue. The bottom panel shows the results of the
burn scar detection model with red areas representing totally burnt and yellow areas
representing less burnt areas that feature a vegetation signal.

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Discussion and Conclusion
In our experience natural features rarely have a normal distribution. The
Gaussian approximation is computationally fast, simple to implement, and
works well on features that are continuous across the landscape. This method
is unlikely to be helpful where features are discrete and spatially separated.
None the less the flood mapping results do identify small farm dams provided
they are large enough with respect to the spatial resolution of the sensor and
the contained water is not completely confounded by other features.
The use of fuzzy classification to un-mix the contributions of various features to
the reflectance of an object allows for a more informative output. Flood maps
can include classes describing submerged vegetation or mud while burn scar
maps can include the distinction between understory and canopy burns. The
transitional classes created in this flood mapping process have been used by
NSW SES to help plan the location of medical and food drops for impacted
communities during the recent 2010 floods in northern NSW. They found that
the mixed classes indicated areas that were liable to be difficult to traverse.
The fuzzy-Gaussian model implemented in object-oriented analysis provides a
fast method of extracting features from imagery with little user intervention.
Previous examination of flood imagery using a more traditional density slice of
band 5 (Frazier and Page, 2000), took hours to complete and was very user
intensive, producing many errors of commission. Further the results were not
transferrable to other scenes. The modelled method repeatably analyses full
scenes in under 30 minutes and produces consistent results between scenes.
The method has proved to be applicable to different image types including
Landsat, MODIS and SAR, providing a standard method for feature extraction
with minimal user input. This method is useful where results need to be
generated quickly and accuracy is not critical, such as in emergency response
situations and where large volumes of data need to be analysed quickly in
batch processes with repeatable results.

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Multi-resolution, object-oriented fuzzy analysis of remote sensing data for GIS-
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Frazier, P.S., and Page, K.J., 2000, Water body detection and delineation with
Landsat TM data, Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing, 66:1461-
1467.
Lopez-Garcia, M.J., and Caselles, V., 1991, Mapping burns and natural
reforestation using Thematic Mapper data, Geocarto Inernational, 6:31-37.
Xiong, B., Zhang, X., and Jiang, W., 2009, Semi-supervised classification
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