1 Spatial Modelling of the Terrestrial Environment - Georeferencial

10
Characterizing Land Use in Urban
Systems via Built-Form
Connectivity Models
Stuart Barr and Mike Barnsley
10.1 Introduction
It has been argued that information on urban land use cannot be directly inferred from
automated analyses of multispectral, remotely sensed images, when performed at the level
of individual pixels (Sadler et al., 1991; Barr and Barnsley, 1995, 1999). While the spectral
response of the latter may be functionally related to land cover (i.e., the physical materials,
such as grass, tarmac, concrete and water, at the Earth surface), land use is an altogether
more complex construct – one that is defined principally in terms of socio-economic activity
and that is typically expressed spatially across multi-pixel regions of the urban scene
(Barnsley and Barr, 2001; Barnsley et al., 2001). Human photo-interpreters, on the other
hand, are generally able to recognize and classify a range of different urban land-use
categories in airborne- and satellite-sensor images. One might posit that they do so, whether
consciously or subconsciously, by identifying key land-cover objects/entities within the
urban scene (e.g. buildings, roads and various types of open space), by considering the size
and shape of these objects, and by examining the spatial and semantic relations between
them. It seems likely, therefore, that automated analyses of urban land use in remotely
sensed images can best be achieved using a similar multi-stage approach: in other words,
by inferring land use from an analysis of previously identified land-cover types (Wharton,
1982a; Moller-Jenson, 1990; Barnsley and Barr, 1992, Johnsson, 1994, 1996, 1999;).
Spatial Modelling of the Terrestrial Environment. Edited by R. Kelly, N. Drake, S. Barr.
C○ 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. ISBN: 0-470-84348-9.