Integrating machine learning techniques and high-resolution imagery to generate GIS-ready information for urban water consumption studies

Abstract

Urban sprawl driven by shifts in tourism development produces new suburban landscapes of water consumption on Mediterranean coasts. Golf courses, ornamental, 'Atlantic' gardens and swimming pools are the most striking artefacts of this transformation, threatening the local water supply systems and exacerbating water scarcity. In the face of climate change, urban landscape irrigation is becoming increasingly important from a resource management point of view. This paper adopts urban remote sensing towards a targeted mapping approach using machine learning techniques and highresolution satellite imagery (WorldView-2) to generate GIS-ready information for urban water consumption studies. Swimming pools, vegetation and -as a subgroup of vegetation -turf grass are extracted as important determinants of water consumption. For image analysis, the complex nature of urban environments suggests spatial-spectral classification, i.e. the complementary use of the spectral signature and spatial descriptors. Multiscale image segmentation provides means to extract the spatial descriptors -namely object feature layers -which can be concatenated at pixel level to the spectral signature. This study assesses the value of object features using different machine learning techniques and amounts of labeled information for learning. The results indicate the benefit of the spatial-spectral approach if combined with appropriate classifiers like tree-based ensembles or support vector machines, which can handle high dimensionality. Finally, a Random Forest classifier was chosen to deliver the classified input data for the estimation of evaporative water loss and net landscape irrigation requirements.

Contribution of Remote Sensing Technologies to a Holistic Coastal and Marine Environmental Management Framework: A Review

“…Llausàs et al, 2018 [108] used LIDAR data as an ARS application from the cadastre of Barcelona city to estimate water use for private swimming pools along the coast of the city. Wolf and Hof., 2012 [107] performed machine learning techniques integrated with high-resolution SRS imagery derived from Worldview 2 data to generate information regarding urban water consumption, including swimming pool assessment.…”