Application of Bayesian Probability Rule to the Combination of Spectral and Temporal Contextual Information in Land-cover Classification

A probabilistic classification framework is presented that can combine temporal contextual information derived from an existing land-cover map in order to improve the classification accuracy of land-cover classes that can not be discriminated well when using spectral information only. The transition probability is computed by using the existing land-cover map and training data, and considered as a priori probability. By combining the a priori probability with conditional probability computed from spectral information via a Bayesian combination rule, the a posteriori probability is finally computed and then the final land-cover types are determined. The method presented in this paper can be adopted to any probabilistic classification algorithms in a simple way, compared with conventional classification methods that require heavy computational loads to incorporate the temporal contextual information. A case study for crop classification using time-series MODIS data sets is carried out to illustrate the applicability of the presented method. The classification accuracies of the land-cover classes, which showed lower classification accuracies when using only spectral information due to the low resolution MODIS data, were much improved by combining the temporal contextual information. It is expected that the presented probabilistic method would be useful both for updating the existing past land-cover maps, and for improving the classification accuracy.