Neural network approach to land cover mapping

A pattern classification method is proposed for remote sensing data using neural networks. First, the authors apply the error backpropagation (BP) algorithm to classify the remote sensing data. In this case, the classification performance depends on a training data set. In order to get stable and precise classification results, the training data set is selected based on geographical information and Kohonen´s self-organizing feature map. Using the training data set and the error backpropagation algorithm, a layered neural network is trained such that the training patterns are classified with a specified accuracy. After training the neural network, some pixels are deleted from the original training data set if they are incorrectly classified and a new training data set is built up. Once training is complete, a testing data set is classified by using the trained neural network. The classification results of LANDSAT TM data show that this approach produces excellent results which are more realistic and noiseless compared with a conventional Bayesian method