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CropCam UAV for Land Use/Land Cover Mapping over Penang Island, Malaysia

Faez M. Hassan, H. S. Lim and M. Z. Mat Jafri

Pertanika Journal of Science & Technology, Volume 19, Issue S, October 2011

Keywords: CropCam, LULC, supervise classification, digital camera

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The problem of difficulty in obtaining cloud-free scene at the equatorial region from satellite platforms can be overcome by using airborne imagery as an attempt for introducing an economical method of remote sensing data; which only requires a digital camera to provide near time data. Forty three digital images were captured using a high resolution digital camera model pentax optio A40 (12 megapixels)at a selected location in the same day in Penang Island from a low-altitude flying autopilot aircraft (CropCam) to generate land use/land cover (LULC) map of the test area. The CropCam was flown at an average altitude of 320 meters over the ground while capturing images which were taken during two flying missions for the duration of approximately 15 and 20 minutes respectively. The CropCam was equipped with a digital camera as a sensor to capture the GPS points based digital images according to the present time to ensure the mosaic of the digital images. Forty one images were used in providing a mosaic image of a bigger coverage of area (full panorama). Training samples were collected simultaneously when the CropCam captured the images by using hand held GPS. Supervised classification techniques, such as the maximum likelihood, minimum-to-distance, and parallelepiped were applied to the panoramic image to generate LULC map for the study area. It was found that the maximum likelihood classifier produce superior results and achieved a high degree of accuracy. The results indicated that the CropCam equipped with a high resolution digital camera can be useful and suitable tool for the tropical region, and this technique could reduce the cost and time of acquiring images for LULC mapping.

ISSN 0128-7680

e-ISSN 2231-8526

Article ID

JST-0326-2011

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