A New Urban Built-Up Index and Its Application in National Central Cities of China

Accurately mapping urban built-up areas is critical for monitoring urbanization and development. Previous studies have shown that Night light (NTL) data is effective in characterizing the extent of human activity. But its inherently low spatial resolution and saturation effect limit its application...

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Main Authors: Linfeng Wang, Shengbo Chen, Lei Chen, Zibo Wang, Bin Liu, Yucheng Xu
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2024-01-01
Series:ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2220-9964/13/1/21
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author Linfeng Wang
Shengbo Chen
Lei Chen
Zibo Wang
Bin Liu
Yucheng Xu
author_facet Linfeng Wang
Shengbo Chen
Lei Chen
Zibo Wang
Bin Liu
Yucheng Xu
author_sort Linfeng Wang
collection DOAJ
description Accurately mapping urban built-up areas is critical for monitoring urbanization and development. Previous studies have shown that Night light (NTL) data is effective in characterizing the extent of human activity. But its inherently low spatial resolution and saturation effect limit its application in the construction of urban built-up extraction. In this study, we developed a new index called VNRT (Vegetation, Nighttime Light, Road, and Temperature) to address these challenges and improve the accuracy of built-up area extraction. The VNRT index is the first to fuse the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), NPP-VIIRS Nighttime NTL data, road density data, and land surface temperature (LST) through factor multiplication. To verify the good performance of VNRT in extracting built-up areas, the built-up area ranges of four national central cities in China (Chengdu, Wuhan, Xi’an, and Zhengzhou) in 2019 are extracted by the local optimum thresholding method and compared with the actual validation points. The results show that the spatial distribution of VNRT is highly consistent with the actual built-up area. THE VNRT increases the variability between urban built-up areas and non-built-up areas, and can effectively distinguish some types of land cover that are easily ignored in previous urban indices, such as urban parks and water bodies. The VNRT index had the highest Accuracy (0.97), F1-score (0.94), Kappa coefficient (0.80), and overall accuracy (92%) compared to the two proposed urban indices. Therefore, the VNRT index could improve the identification of urban built-up areas and be an effective tool for long-term monitoring of regional-scale urbanization.
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spelling doaj.art-330f2f8c87b2414fba54f75a4b48802d2024-01-26T16:50:08ZengMDPI AGISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information2220-99642024-01-011312110.3390/ijgi13010021A New Urban Built-Up Index and Its Application in National Central Cities of ChinaLinfeng Wang0Shengbo Chen1Lei Chen2Zibo Wang3Bin Liu4Yucheng Xu5College of Geo-Exploration Science and Technology, Jilin University, Changchun 130026, ChinaCollege of Geo-Exploration Science and Technology, Jilin University, Changchun 130026, ChinaCollege of Geo-Exploration Science and Technology, Jilin University, Changchun 130026, ChinaCollege of Geo-Exploration Science and Technology, Jilin University, Changchun 130026, ChinaCollege of Geo-Exploration Science and Technology, Jilin University, Changchun 130026, ChinaCollege of Geo-Exploration Science and Technology, Jilin University, Changchun 130026, ChinaAccurately mapping urban built-up areas is critical for monitoring urbanization and development. Previous studies have shown that Night light (NTL) data is effective in characterizing the extent of human activity. But its inherently low spatial resolution and saturation effect limit its application in the construction of urban built-up extraction. In this study, we developed a new index called VNRT (Vegetation, Nighttime Light, Road, and Temperature) to address these challenges and improve the accuracy of built-up area extraction. The VNRT index is the first to fuse the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), NPP-VIIRS Nighttime NTL data, road density data, and land surface temperature (LST) through factor multiplication. To verify the good performance of VNRT in extracting built-up areas, the built-up area ranges of four national central cities in China (Chengdu, Wuhan, Xi’an, and Zhengzhou) in 2019 are extracted by the local optimum thresholding method and compared with the actual validation points. The results show that the spatial distribution of VNRT is highly consistent with the actual built-up area. THE VNRT increases the variability between urban built-up areas and non-built-up areas, and can effectively distinguish some types of land cover that are easily ignored in previous urban indices, such as urban parks and water bodies. The VNRT index had the highest Accuracy (0.97), F1-score (0.94), Kappa coefficient (0.80), and overall accuracy (92%) compared to the two proposed urban indices. Therefore, the VNRT index could improve the identification of urban built-up areas and be an effective tool for long-term monitoring of regional-scale urbanization.https://www.mdpi.com/2220-9964/13/1/21urban built-up areaNPP-VIIRS nighttime light dataland surface temperatureroad network densitycomprehensive urban built-up area extraction index
spellingShingle Linfeng Wang
Shengbo Chen
Lei Chen
Zibo Wang
Bin Liu
Yucheng Xu
A New Urban Built-Up Index and Its Application in National Central Cities of China
ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information
urban built-up area
NPP-VIIRS nighttime light data
land surface temperature
road network density
comprehensive urban built-up area extraction index
title A New Urban Built-Up Index and Its Application in National Central Cities of China
title_full A New Urban Built-Up Index and Its Application in National Central Cities of China
title_fullStr A New Urban Built-Up Index and Its Application in National Central Cities of China
title_full_unstemmed A New Urban Built-Up Index and Its Application in National Central Cities of China
title_short A New Urban Built-Up Index and Its Application in National Central Cities of China
title_sort new urban built up index and its application in national central cities of china
topic urban built-up area
NPP-VIIRS nighttime light data
land surface temperature
road network density
comprehensive urban built-up area extraction index
url https://www.mdpi.com/2220-9964/13/1/21
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