Step-wise Land-class Elimination Approach for extracting mixed-type built-up areas of Kolkata megacity

AbstractThe extraction of urban built-up areas is an important aspect of urban planning and understanding the complex drivers and biophysical mechanism of urban climate processes. However, built-up area extraction using Landsat data is a challenging task due to spatio-temporal dynamics and spatially intermixed nature of Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) in the cities of the developing countries, particularly in tropics. In the light of advantages and drawbacks of the Normalized Difference Built-up Index (NDBI) and Built-up Area Extraction Method (BAEM), a new and simple method i.e. Step-wise Land-class Elimination Approach (SLEA) is proposed for rapid and accurate mapping of urban built-up areas without depending exclusively on the band specific normalized indices, in order to pursue a more generalized approach. It combines the use of a single band layer, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) image and another binary image obtained through Logit model. Based on the spectral designation of the satelli...