Effect analysis of WorldView-3 SWIR bands for wetland classification in Suncheon Bay, South Korea

Unlike general VHR (Very-High-Resolution) satellite sensors that are mainly for panchromatic and MS (Multispectral) imaging, Worldview-3 sensor additionally provides eight SWIR (Short Wavelength Infrared) bands in wavelength range from 1198 nm to 2365 nm. This study investigates the effect of informative Worldview-3 SWIR bands for wetland classification performance. Worldview-3 imagery acquired over Sunchon Bay, which is a coastal wetland located in South Korea, is used to implement the classification. Land-cover classes for the scene are determined by referring to national land-cover maps, which are provided by the Ministry of Environment, overlapped with the scene. After that, training data for each determined class are collected. In order to analyze the effect of SWIR bands, classifications with and without SWIR bands are carried out and the results are then compared. In this regard, a SVM (Support Vector Machine) is utilized as their classifier. As a result of the accuracy assessments performed by test data that are independently extracted from training data, it was confirmed that classification performance was improved when the SWIR bands are included as input features for SVM-based classification.