A Robust Built-Up Area Presence Index by Anisotropic Rotation-Invariant Textural Measure

A procedure for the calculation of a texture-derived built-up presence index (PanTex) from textural characteristics of panchromatic satellite data is presented. The index is based on fuzzy rule-based composition of anisotropic textural co-occurrence measures derived from the satellite data by the gray-level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM). Examples are produced how the PanTex index reduces the edge effects of the nonbuilt-up linear features and improves capacity to discriminate between built-up and nonbuilt-up areas. The accuracy and robustness of the PanTex measure against seasonal changes, multisensor, multiscene, and data degradation by wavelet-based compression and histogram stretching is discussed with some examples.