Comparison of Machine Learning Methods for Satellite Image Classification: A Case Study of Casablanca Using Landsat Imagery and Google Earth Engine

Abstract

Satellite image classification is crucial in various applications such as urban planning, environmental monitoring, and land use analysis. In this study, the authors present a comparative analysis of different supervised and unsupervised learning methods for satellite image classification, focusing on a case study in Casablanca using Landsat 8 imagery. This research aims to identify the most effective machine-learning approach for accurately classifying land cover in an urban environment. The methodology used consists of the pre-processing of Landsat imagery data from Casablanca city, the authors extract relevant features and partition them into training and test sets, and then use random forest (RF), SVM (support vector machine), classification, and regression tree (CART), gradient tree boost (GTB), decision tree (DT), and minimum distance (MD) algorithms. Through a series of experiments, the authors evaluate the performance of each machine learning method in terms of accuracy, and Kappa coefficient. This work shows that random forest is the best-performing algorithm, with an accuracy of 95.42% and 0.94 Kappa coefficient. The authors discuss the factors of their performance, including data characteristics, accurate selection, and model influencing.