Image Processing Reference
In-Depth Information
were developed and tested. They were mainly based on the fusion before and after
operating fuzzy classification on satellite images. The results are comparable to those
obtained by principal component analysis and ground truthing (Smara et al.
2003a
).
13.2.3
Surface Temperature Estimation
Asmat et al. (
2003
) attempted to estimate the surface temperature above ground,
based on the classification of Landsat-ETM+ imagery acquired in May 2001 for
CyberJava (Malaysia). The land surface temperature and the classified land cover
categories were generated and exported into a GIS environment for urban heat map-
ping analysis. The correlation between land use categories and surface temperature
showed that urban areas exhibited higher surface temperature than forests, agricul-
ture areas and water. A polygon-based classification process utilizing fuzzy logic
has been adopted to integrate a broad spectrum of different object features, such as
spectral values, shape, and texture.
13.2.4
Green Belt Implementation
Sand drift and movement in the Errachidia Oasis in the Moroccan desert have been
a source of major environmental and socioeconomic changes. A huge quantity of
sands is accumulated near urban areas, across roads, and inside palm trees, resulting
in an out-migration of rural people. For this purpose, Lahraoui (
2003
) investigated
a new approach to determine the shape and the location of a “green belt” around
the oasis. This belt has been designed, in order to combat against desertification,
especially sand movement, dune formation, and to protect the main infrastructures
(e.g., airport, roads, irrigation channels, crops, and biodiversity). One single date
Spot-HRV imagery of July 2002 was processed to delineate the potential path of
the green belt, taking into account many physical, biological and social parameters
including: soil, climate, surface stage, topography and socio-economy.
13.2.5
GIS Implementation at Municipalities
The GCC countries started the development of GIS applications since early 1990s.
Since that time many GIS have been implemented in different areas related to base
maps, municipality, utilities, business, and land registration. Below are some
examples of currently operational GIS in GCC countries:
•
United Arab Emirates has developed four GIS applications within various
municipalities, including Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, and Fujairah.
The Kingdom of Bahrain has developed several applications related to geocoding
•
and address locations, and crime analysis in all municipalities of Bahrain. Durrat
Al-Bahrain is an enterprise real estate project based on Internet -based GIS.
