TOWARDS DEVELOPMENT OF A NATIONAL HUMAN SETTLEMENT LAYER USING HIGH RESOLUTION IMAGERY: a contribution to SDG reporting

This study investigated the extraction of building structures using SPOT 6 satellite imagery. This work will contribute towards development of a National Human Settlement Layer developed and maintained by SANSA. The proposed methodology uses textural and spectral properties to extract building structures from other land use features. This method uses textural information derived from the 1.5m panchromatic band and soil index to classify building structures from segmented image objects.  The methodology was tested in different areas including formal, rural village and informal settlements.  The results show the spatial distribution of building structures within these different human settlement types. This paper presents the results and compares the detection accuracy achieved within these different settlement types. The proposed can contribute towards monitoring of human settlement developments over a larger area which is vital during spatial planning, service delivery and environmental management. The data can also be used to support reporting of progress made on SDG 11 and other development goals.