Feature selection by genetic algorithms in object-based classification of IKONOS imagery for forest mapping in Flanders, Belgium

Obtaining detailed information about the amount of forest cover is an important issue for governmental policy and forest management. This paper presents a new approach to update the Flemish Forest Map using IKONOS imagery. The proposed method is a three-step object-oriented classification routine that involves the integration of 1) image segmentation, 2) feature selection by Genetic Algorithms (GAs) and 3) joint Neural Network (NN) based object-classification. The added value of feature selection and neural network combination is investigated. Results show that, with GA-feature selection, the mean classification accuracy (in terms of Kappa Index of Agreement) is significantly higher (p < 0.01) than without feature selection. On average, the summed output of 50 networks provided a significantly higher (p < 0.01) classification accuracy than the mean output of 50 individual networks. Finally, the proposed classification routine yields a significantly higher (p < 0.01) classification accuracy as compared with a strategy without feature selection and joint network output. In addition, the proposed method showed its potential when few training data were available.