Title
Object-based spatial cluster analysis of urban landscape pattern using nighttime light satellite images: a case study of China
Abstract
Previous studies have demonstrated urban built-up areas can be derived from nighttime light satellite DMSP-OLS images at the national or continent scale. This paper presents a novel object-based method for detecting and characterizing urban spatial clusters from nighttime light satellite images automatically. First, urban built-up areas, derived from the regionally adaptive thresholding of DMSP-OLS nighttime light data, are represented as discrete urban objects. These urban objects are treated as basic spatial units and quantified in terms of geometric and shape attributes and their spatial relationships. Next, a spatial cluster analysis is applied to these basic urban objects to form a higher level of spatial units – urban spatial clusters. The Minimum Spanning Tree MST is used to represent spatial proximity relationships among urban objects. An algorithm based on competing propagation of objects is proposed to construct the MST of urban objects. Unlike previous studies, the distance between urban objects i.e., the boundaries of urban built-up areas is adopted to quantify the edge weight in MST. A Gestalt Theory-based method is employed to partition the MST of urban objects into urban spatial clusters. The derived urban spatial clusters are geographically delineated through mathematical morphology operation and construction of minimum convex hull. A series of landscape ecologic and statistical attributes are defined and calculated to characterize these clusters. Our method has been successfully applied to the analysis of urban landscape of China at the national level, and a series of urban clusters have been delimited and quantified.
Year
DOI
Venue
2014
10.1080/13658816.2014.922186
International Journal of Geographical Information Science
Keywords
Field
DocType
minimum spanning tree,dmsp-ols data,urban spatial clusters,object-based method,gestalt theory
Cluster (physics),Satellite,Mathematical morphology,Remote sensing,Gestalt psychology,Convex hull,Spatial cluster analysis,Thresholding,Geography,Cartography,Minimum spanning tree
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
28
11
1365-8816
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
36
2.09
11
Authors
7
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Bailang Yu127021.67
Song Shu2372.78
Hongxing Liu3907.86
Wei Song4474.41
Jianping Wu5695.01
Lei Wang61047.19
zuoqi chen710910.73