Description and Evaluation Approach for Uncertainty of RS Images Classification

With the development of researches on the classification quality of remote sensing images, researchers thought that uncertainty is the main factor that influences classification quality. This study puts forward an approach to uncertainty representation, which is developed from two aspects: formalized description and comprehensive evaluation. First, we complete the classification using fuzzy surveillance approach, taking it as a formalized description of classification uncertainty. Then we introduce a hybrid entropy model for classification uncertainty evaluation, which can meet the requirement of comprehensive reflection of several uncertainties, while constructing the evaluation index from pixel scale with the full consideration of the different contribution to the error rate of each pixel. Finally, an application example will be studied to examine the new method. The result shows that the evaluation results fully reflect the classification quality, when compared with the conventional evaluation method which constructs models from unitary uncertainty and category scale.