7th Workshop on Forest Fire Management - EARSeL, European ...

FUEL TYPE MAPPING USING SPOT-5 IMAGERY AND OBJECT BASED
IMAGE ANALYSIS
Abstract: Judicial wildland fire prevention and management requires precise
information on fuel characteristics and spatial distribution of the various
vegetation types present in an area. Remote sensing, along with
Geographic Information Systems (G.I.S.), are important components of fuel
mapping efforts and fire hazard mitigation. The aim of this work was to
investigate the potential use of SPOT-5 imagery in fuel type mapping by
employing object based image analysis. The specific objects were: i) to
develop an object based classification model for fuel type mapping in
Chalkidiki (Northern Greece), and ii) to evaluate the transferability of the
developed model in Attica (Central Greece). A modified version of the
Prometheus fuel classification scheme was developed, considering information
content of the SPOT imagery. Originally, an object based model including
multi-scale image segmentation and classification, was developed and
applied in Chalkidiki. Following, the model rule set was transferred and
applied, after minor adjustments, in Attica. Extensive field work was carried
out in both test sites for model development, training and evaluation.
The overall accuracy of the fuel type map produced for the Chalkidiki study
area was more than 85% while the results obtained for the Attica area were
also satisfactory (overall accuracy 80%). Considering the reliability and
robustness of the developed approach as well as the characteristics of SPOT-
5 imagery, the proposed methodology has the potential to be used operationally
for generating large scale fuel type maps over extended areas.
1 - Introduction
I. Stergiopoulos, A. Polychronaki, I.Z. Gitas, G. Galidaki,
K. Dimitrakopoulos, G. Mallinis
Laboratory of Forest Management and Remote Sensing,
School of Forestry and Natural Environment,
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
thor@for.auth.gr
Forest fires are an integral part of the Mediterranean ecosystems and constitute
a real threat to natural environment, given the spectacular increase
in number of fires events observed in recent decades (Pausas and Vallejo,
1999)
In order to improve forest fire prevention and suppression, fire managers
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