A project report on

ANT BASED SUPERVISED LAND USE MAP

GENERATION FROM REMOTELY SENSED IMAGE
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the award of the degree of
Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science &Engineering

Submitted by
TEZASWI RAJ(2015-1036)
KISLAY SINHA (2015-1019)
MANOJ KUMAR(2015-1038)
MOUSUMI TIRKI (L2016-1073)

Under the guidance of

Mr. ANAMITRA BASU
Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science &Engineering
University Institute of Technology
The University of Burdwan

Department of Computer Science Engineering

University Institute of Technology
Golapbag(NORTH), Burdwan -713104, West Bengal, India
Academic Year - 2018-2019

1
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

We would like to acknowledge the guidance and support of our Project Guide Mr.
Anamitra Basu, Assistant Professor of Computer Science & Engineering in pursuing
this academic project. We want to express our respect and gratitude to all our
Computer Science and Engineering Department teachers for their constant support
and encouragement that made our project "ANT BASED SUPERVISED LAND USE MAP
GENERATION FROM REMOTELY SENSED IMAGES” successful one. We would also like
to convey deep regards to Dr. Souvik Bhattacharyya, In-Charge of Computer Science
& Engineering who granted all possible resource of the college to us for the
fulfillment of the project.

We would like to thank Anindya Halder(Indian Statical institute Kolkata), Sumita

Gosh(Jadavpur University), Ashish Gosh(Indian Statistical Institute,Kolkata) for
their very informative and helpful journal which is foundation of this project. We
would also like to express our utmost gratitude to ISRO,as the image used for
analysis in this project had been provided by satellite IRS-1A, without which it would
be an uphill task to follow on.

We also extend our sincere thanks to University Institute of Technology. The

University of Burdwan for providing an opportunity for fulfillment of our most
cherished desire of reaching my goal.
Tezaswi Raj

Roll No. 2015-1036 -------------------------------------

Kislay Sinha

Roll No. 2015-1019 --------------------------------------

Manoj Kumar

Roll No. 2015-1038 -------------------------- ------------

Mousumi Tirki
Roll No.L 2016-1073 ------------------------- --------------

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UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
THE UNIVERSITY OF BURDWAN

CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL
This is to certify that the project entitled “Ant based supervised
land use map generation from remotely sensed image” is successfully
carried out by Mr. Tezaswi Raj (Regn. no.- A2812 of 2015-16), Mr.
Kislay Sinha(Roll no.-2015-1019), Mr. Manoj Kumar (Regn. no.-
A2972 of 2015-16) and Ms. Mousumi Tirki(Regn. no.- A5058of
2016-17) and of University Institute of Technology, The
University of Burdwan, Burdwan, West Bengal, India, under my
guidance and supervision towards the partial fulfillment of the
academic requirements for the award of the degree of Bachelor of
Engineering (B.E.) in Computer Science & Engineering (CSE).

Mr. Anamitra Basu

Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science &Engineering
University Institute of Technology

3
 The University of Burdwan

UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

THE UNIVERSITY OF BURDWAN

CERTIFICATE
This is to certify that the project entitled “Ant based supervised
land use map generation from remotely sensed image” is successfully
carried out by Mr. Tezaswi Raj (Regn. no.- A2812 of 2015-16), Mr.
Kislay Sinha (Roll no.-2015-1019), Mr. Manoj Kumar (Regn. no.-
A2972 of 2015-16) and Ms. Mousumi Tirki (Regn. no.- A5058of
2016-17) of University Institute of Technology, The University of
Burdwan, Burdwan, West Bengal, India, is a record of bona-fide
Project work carried out by them towards the partial fulfillment
of the academic requirements forthe award of the degree of
Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) in Computer Science & Engineering (CSE).

We wish them every success in their future endeavours.

Dr. Souvik Bhattacharrya Mr. Anamitra Basu

In-charge, Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science & Engineering Department of Computer Science &Engineering
University Institute of Technology University Institute of Technology

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The University of Burdwan The University of Burdwan
Burdwan-713104, West Bengal, India Burdwan-713104, West Bengal, India

UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

THE UNIVERSITY OF BURDWAN

DECLARATION
We hereby declare that the project work in the form of this report entitled “Ant
based supervised land use map generation from remotely sensed
image” submitted to University Institute of Technology, The University of
Burdwan, towards the fulfillment of academic requirements for the award of
degree of Bachelor of Engineering (B.E) in Computer Science & Engineering is
our original work and not submitted for any other award, degree, similar titles or
prizes. We also declare that all the details and information presented in this work
have been duly acknowledged under the purview of ethical standard and
guidelines.
GroupMembers:
1. TEZASWI RAJ(2015-1036)
2. KISLAY SINHA (2015-1019)
3. MANOJ KUMAR(2015-1038)
4. MOUSUMI TIRKI (L2016-1073)

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 Abstract
This report discusses the result of the work done in Ant based
supervised land use map generation from remotely sensed
images.

The land use or land cover map depicts the physical coverage of the
Earth’s terrestrial surface according to its use (viz. vegetation,
habitation, water body, bare soil, artificial structures etc.). Land
use map generation from remotely sensed images is one of the
challenging task of remote sensing technology. In this report,
motivated from group forming behaviour of real ants, we have
proposed a novel ant based supervised algorithm to automatically
generate land use map from multispectral remotely sensed images.
Here supervised land use map generation is treated as classification task
which requires some labelled pattern/pixel beforehand.

Keywords –

Remote sensing, Land use map, Land use or Land cover change(LULC),Pattern
classification, Ant colony, Ant colony optimization(ACO), Aggregation pheromone.

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 Contents
Abstract

List of Figures 3

List of Tables 4

1. Chapter 1 : Ant behavior and Ant 6

colony optimization
1.1 Introduction 7
1.1.I Biological Inspiration 7
1.1.II Optimization technique 9
1.1.III Application of ACO 12
1.1.IV Current hot topics in ACO 13
1.1.V Outlook and conclusion 13

2. Chapter 2 : Remote Sensing 15

2.1 Introduction 16
2.2 Principles of remote sensing 17
2.3 Main stages in remote sensing 17
2.4 Remote sensing platform 18

3. Chapter 3 : Land use modelling using 23

remote sensing
3.1 Introduction 24
3.2 Need for estimation of land use or land cover 25
change(LULC)
3.3 Remote sensing as a tool for LULC 25
3.4 Use of remote sensing data in LULC 26
3.5 Conclusion 26

References 27

4. Chapter 4: Ant based supervised LULC 28

using remote sensing
4.1 Supervised method 29
4.1.1 Aggregation pheromone 30
4.2 Algorithm of aggregation based classifier 31
4.3 Implementation of supervised method in IRS-1A 32

Land use map of IRS-1A Calcutta 33

Conclusion 34
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List of Figures

Serial Figure no. and name Page

no. no.
1. Fig.1.1 Experimental setup for the double bridge 9
experiment. (a) Branches have equal lengths.
(b) Branches have different lengths

2. Fig. 1.2 Flowchart of ant colony optimization algorithm 10

3. Fig. 2.1 Schematic representation of remote sensing 16

technique
4. Fig.2.2 Important stages in remote sensing 18

5. Fig.2.3 Remote sensing platform 19

6. Fig. 2.4 Components of an ideal remote sensing system 21

7. Fig 4.1 Histogram equilized image of IRS-1A Calcutta 32

8. Land use map of IRS-1A calcutta 33

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List of Tables

Chapter Tables Page no.

no.
1. TABLE 1 A non-exhaustive list of 12
successful ant colony optimization
algorithms.

Table 2 A non-exhaustive list of

13
application of ACO algorithm.

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Introduction
Remote sensing is a scientific technique to obtain information about an
object, area or phenomenon through the analysis of data acquired by a
device not in contact with the object in question. Remote sensing
images provide a general reflection of the spatial characteristics for
ground objects. Extraction of land use or land cover map information
from multi spectral or hyper spectral remotely sensed images is one of
the important tasks of remote sensing technology. The task is very
complex because of low illumination quality and low spatial resolution
of remotely placed sensors. In order to automatically generate such
land use map from remote sensing images, various pattern
recognition techniques like classification and clustering can be adopted.

Classification is a supervised technique, which requires the training

patterns to assign an unlabeled pattern to a certain class according
to its characteristics. A wide variety of techniques exist in the
literature since several decades for pattern classification.

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 Chapter 1
Ant behavior
&
Ant colony optimization

6
1.1. Introduction
Swarm intelligence is a relatively new approach to problem solving that
takes inspiration from the social behaviors of insects and of other
animals. In particular, ants have inspired a number of methods and
techniques among which the most studied and the most successful is
the general purpose optimization technique known as ant colony
optimization.
Ant colony optimization (ACO) takes inspiration from the foraging
behavior of some ant species. These ants deposit pheromone on the
ground in order to mark some favorable path that should be followed
by other members of the colony.

Ant colony optimization exploits a similar mechanism for solving

optimization problems. From the early nineties, when the first ant
colony optimization algorithm was proposed, ACO attracted the
attention of increasing numbers of researchers and many successful
applications are now available.
Moreover, a substantial corpus of theoretical results is becoming
available that provides useful guidelines to researchers and
practitioners in further applications of ACO.
The goal of this article is to introduce ant colony optimization and to
survey its most notable applications. Section I provides some
background information on the foraging behavior of ants. Section II
describes ant colony optimization. Section III illustrates some of its
most successful applications. Section IV highlights some currently
active research topics.

1.1.I. Biological Inspiration

In the forties and fifties of the twentieth century, the French
entomologist Pierre-Paul Grass´e observed that some species of
termites react to what he called “significant stimuli”.He observed that
the effects of these reactions can act as new significant stimuli for both
the insect that produced them and for the other insects in the colony.
Grass´e used the term stigmergy to describe this particular type of

7
communication in which the “workers are stimulated by the
performance they have achieved”.

The two main characteristics of stigmergy that differentiate it from

other forms of communication are the following:
❏ Stigmergy is an indirect, non-symbolic form of communication
mediated by the environment:insects exchange information by
modifying their environment; and
❏ Stigmergic information is local: it can only be accessed by those
insects that visit the locus in which it was released (or its immediate
neighborhood). Examples of stigmergy can be observed in colonies of
ants. In many ant species, ants walking to and from a food source
deposit on the ground a substance called pheromone. Other ants
perceive the presence of pheromone and tend to follow paths where
pheromone concentration is higher. Through this mechanism, ants are
able to transport food to their nest in a remarkably effective way.

Deneubourg et al. thoroughly investigated the pheromone laying and

following behavior of ants. In an experiment known as the “double
bridge experiment’’, the nest of a colony of Argentine ants were
connected to a food source by two bridges of equal lengths [see Figure
1(a)]. In such a setting, ants start to explore the surroundings of the
nest and eventually reach the food source. Along their path between
food source and nest, Argentine ants deposit pheromone. Initially, each
ant randomly chooses one of the two bridges. However, due to random
fluctuations, after some time one of the two bridges presents a higher
concentration of pheromone than the other and, therefore, attracts
more ants. This brings a further amount of pheromone on that bridge
making it more attractive with the result that after some time the
whole colony converges toward the use of the same bridge.

This colony-level behavior, based on autocatalysis, that is, on the

exploitation of positive feedback, can be used by ants to find the
shortest path between a food source and their nest. Goss et al.
considered a variant of the double bridge experiment in which one

8
bridge is significantly longer than the other [see Figure 1(b)]. In this
case, the stochastic fluctuations in the initial choice of a bridge are
much reduced and a second mechanism plays an important role: the
ants choosing by chance the short bridge are the first to reach the
nest. The short bridge receives, therefore, pheromone earlier than the
long one and this fact increases the probability that further ants select
it rather than the long one. Goss et al.developed a model of the
observed behavior: assuming that at a given moment in time m1ants
have used the first bridge and m2 the second one, the probability p1
for an ant to choose the first bridge is:

FIGURE 1.1 Experimental setup for the double bridge experiment.

(a) Branches have equal lengths. (b) Branches have different lengths

where parameters k and h are to be fitted to the experimental data—

obviously, p2 = 1 − p1 . Monte Carlo simulations showed a very good fit
for k ≈ 20 and h ≈ 2.

1.1.II. The Optimization Technique

The model proposed by Deneubourg and co-workers for explaining the
foraging behavior of ants was the main source of inspiration for the
development of ant colony optimization.In ACO, a number of artificial

9
ants build solutions to the considered optimization problem at hand
and exchange information on the quality of these solutions via a
communication scheme that is reminiscent of the one adopted by real
ants.
Different ant colony optimization algorithms have been proposed. The
original ant colony optimization algorithm is known as Ant System and
was proposed in the early nineties. Since then, a number of other ACO
algorithms were introduced.

Fig 1.2 Flowchart of ACO Algorithm

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1.1.II.I Ant System (AS)
Ant System is the first ACO algorithm proposed in the literature. Its
main characteristic is that, at each iteration, the pheromone values are
updated by all the m ants that have built a solution in the iteration
itself. The pheromone τi j, associated with the edge joining cities i and j,
is updated as follows

where ρ is the evaporation rate, m is the number of ants, and

τki j is the quantity of pheromone laid on edge (i, j) by ant k:

where Q is a constant, and L k is the length of the tour

constructed by ant k.

1.1.II.II Ant Colony System (ACS)

The most interesting contribution of ACS is the introduction of a local
pheromone update in addition to the pheromone update performed at
the end of the construction process (called offline pheromone
update).The local pheromone update is performed by all the ants after
each construction step. Each ant applies it only to the last edge
traversed:

τi j =(1 ϕ)・τi j + ϕ .τ , 0

where ϕ ∈ (0, 1] is the pheromone decay coefficient, and τ0 is the

initial value of the pheromone. The main goal of the local update is to
diversify the search performed by subsequent ants during an iteration:
by decreasing the pheromone concentration on the traversed edges,
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ants encourage subsequent ants to choose other edges and, hence, to
produce different solutions. This makes it less likely that several ants
produce identical solutions during one iteration.

TABLE 1 A non-exhaustive list of successful ant colony optimization algorithms

1.1.III. Applications of Ant Colony Optimization

In recent years, the interest of the scientific community in ACO has
risen sharply. In fact, several successful applications of ACO to a wide
range of different discrete optimization problems are now available.
The large majority of these applications are to NP-hard problems; that
is, to problems for which the best known algorithms that guarantee to
identify an optimal solution have exponential time worst case
complexity. The use of such algorithms is often infeasible in practice,
and ACO algorithms can be useful for quickly finding high-quality
solutions. Other popular applications are to dynamic shortest path
problems arising in telecommunication networks problems. The
number of successful applications to academic problems has
motivated people to adopt ACO for the solution of industrial problems,
proving that this computational intelligence technique is also useful in
real-world applications.

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1.1.IV. Current Hot Topics in ACO
A significant part of research on ACO is still concerned with
applications as they have been presented in the previous section.
However, increasing attention is and will be given to even more
challenging problems that, for example, involve multiple objectives,
dynamic modifications of the data, and the stochastic nature of the
objective function and of the constraints. Other developments focus on
the extension of the applicability of ACO algorithms from discrete to
continuous optimization problems and to the study of parallel
implementations of ACO algorithms.

1.1.V. Outlook and Conclusions

 In the real world, ants(initially) wander randomly, and upon finding
food return to their colony while laying down pheromone trails.If
other ants find such a path, they are likely not to keep travelling at
random, but instead follow the trail laid by earlier ants, returning
and reinforcing.
 pheromone trail starts to evaporate, thus reducing its attractive

13
 strength. The more time it takes for ,an ant to travel down the

path and back again, the more time the pheromones have to
evaporate.

 A short path, by comparision, gets marched over faster, and thus

the pheromone density remains high.

 Pheromone evaporation has also the advantage of avoiding the

convergence to a locally optimal solution. If there were no
evaporation at all, the paths chosen by the ants would tend to be
excessively attractive to the following ones. In that case,the
exploration of the solution space would be constrained.

 The idea of the ant colony algorithm is to mimic the behaviour with
simulated ants walking around the search space representing the
problem to be solved.

As we have discussed, nowadays hundreds of researchers worldwide

are applying ACO to classic NP-hard optimization problems, while only
a few works concern variations that include dynamic and stochastic
aspects as well as multiple objectives. The study of how best to apply
ACO to such variations will certainly be one of the major research
directions in the near future. A better understanding of the theoretical
properties of ACO algorithm is certainly another research direction
that will be pursued in the future. Fifteen years ago, when the first
ACO algorithm was introduced, taking inspiration from ants for
designing optimization algorithms seemed a crazy idea. The many
successful applications have changed our perspective: what seemed a
far out idea is now considered one of the most promising approaches
to the approximate solution of difficult optimization problems

14
 Chapter 2
Remote sensing

15
2.1 Introduction
Remote sensing is an art and science of obtaining information about
an object or feature without physically coming in contact with that
object or feature. Humans apply remote sensing in their day-to-day
business, through vision, hearing and sense of smell. The data
collected can be of many forms: variations in acoustic wave
distributions (e.g., sonar), variations in force distributions (e.g., gravity
meter), variations in electromagnetic energy distributions (e.g., eye) etc.
These remotely collected data through various sensors may be
analyzed to obtain information about the objects or features under
investigation. In this course we will deal with remote sensing through
electromagnetic energy sensors only.
Thus, remote sensing is the process of inferring surface parameters
from measurements of the electromagnetic radiation (EMR) from the
Earth’s surface. This EMR can either be reflected or emitted from the
Earth’s surface. In other words, remote sensing is detecting and
measuring electromagnetic (EM) energy emanating or reflected from
distant objects made of various materials, so that we can identify and
categorize these objects by class or type, substance and spatial
distribution [American Society of Photogrammetry, 1975].

Fig. 2.1 Schematic representation of remote sensing technique.

(Source: http://geoportal.icimod.org)

16
Remote sensing provides a means of observing large areas at finer
spatial and temporal frequencies. It finds extensive applications in civil
engineering including watershed studies, hydrological states and
fluxes simulation, hydrological modeling, disaster management
services such as flood and drought warning and monitoring, damage
assessment in case of natural calamities, environmental monitoring,
urban planning etc.

2.2 Principles of Remote Sensing

Different objects reflect or emit different amounts of energy in different
bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. The amount of energy reflected
or emitted depends on the properties of both the material and the
incident energy (angle of incidence, intensity and wavelength).
Detection and discrimination of objects or surface features is done
through the uniqueness of the reflected or emitted electromagnetic
radiation from the object.
A device to detect this reflected or emitted electro-magnetic radiation
from an object is called a “sensor” (e.g., cameras and scanners). A
vehicle used to carry the sensor is called a “platform” (e.g., aircrafts
and satellites).

2.3 Main stages in remote sensing are the following.

A. Emission of electromagnetic radiation
 The Sun or an EMR source located on the platform
B. Transmission of energy from the source to the object
 Absorption and scattering of the EMR while transmission
C. Interaction of EMR with the object and subsequent reflection and
emission
D. Transmission of energy from the object to the sensor
E. Recording of energy by the sensor
 Photographic or non-photographic sensors
F. Transmission of the recorded information to the ground station
G. Processing of the data into digital or hard copy image
H. Analysis of data
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These stages are shown in Fig. 2.

Fig.2.2 Important stages in remote sensing

2.4 Remote Sensing Platforms

Remote sensing platforms can be classified as follows, based on the
elevation from the Earth’s surface at which these platforms are placed.
 Ground level remote sensing
o Ground level remote sensors are very close to the ground
o They are basically used to develop and calibrate sensors for
different features on the Earth’s surface.
 Aerial remote sensing
o Low altitude aerial remote sensing
o High altitude aerial remote sensing
 Space borne remote sensing
o Space shuttles
o Polar orbiting satellites
o Geo-stationary satellites

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 Fig.2.3 Remote sensing platform
(Modified from http://www.ilmb.gov.bc.ca/risc/pubs/aquatic/aerialvideo/assets/figure1.gif)

19
2.5Airborne and Space-borne Remote Sensing
In airborne remote sensing, downward or sideward looking sensors
mounted on aircrafts are used to obtain images of the earth's surface.
Very high spatial resolution images (20 cm or less) can be obtained
through this. However, it is not suitable to map a large area. Less
coverage area and high cost per unit area of ground coverage are the
major disadvantages of airborne remote sensing. While airborne
remote sensing missions are mainly one-time operations, space-borne
missions offer continuous monitoring of the earth features.
LiDAR, analog aerial photography, videography, thermal imagery and
digital photography are commonly used in airborne remote sensing.
In space-borne remote sensing, sensors mounted on space shuttles or
satellites orbiting the Earth are used. There are several remote sensing
satellites (Geostationary and Polar orbiting) providing imagery for
research and operational applications. While Geostationary or
Geosynchronous Satellites are used for communication and
meteorological purposes, polar orbiting or sun-synchronous satellites
are essentially used for remote sensing. The main advantages of space-
borne remote sensing are large area coverage, less cost per unit area of
coverage, continuous or frequent coverage of an area of interest,
automatic/ semiautomatic computerized processing and analysis.
However, when compared to aerial photography, satellite imagery has a
lower resolution.
Landsat satellites, Indian remote sensing (IRS) satellites, IKONOS,
SPOT satellites, AQUA and TERRA of NASA and INSAT satellite series
are a few examples.

2.6 Ideal Remote Sensing System

The basic components of an ideal remote sensing system include:
i. A Uniform Energy Source which provides energy over all
wavelengths, at a constant, known, high level of output.
ii. A Non-interfering Atmosphere which will not modify either the
energy transmitted from the source or emitted (or reflected) from the
object in any manner.

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iii. A Series of Unique Energy/Matter Interactions at the Earth's
Surface which generate reflected and/or emitted signals that are
selective with respect to wavelength and also unique to each object or
earth surface feature type.
iv. A Super Sensor which is highly sensitive to all wavelengths. A super
sensor would be simple, reliable, accurate, economical, and requires
no power or space. This sensor yields data on the absolute brightness
(or radiance) from a scene as a function of wavelength.
v. A Real-Time Data Handling System which generates the instance
radiance versus wavelength response and processes into an
interpretable format in real time. The data derived is unique to a
particular terrain and hence provide insight into its physical-chemical-
biological state.
vi. Multiple Data Users having knowledge in their respective disciplines
and also in remote sensing data acquisition and analysis techniques.
The information collected will be available to them faster and at less
expense. This information will aid the users in various decision making
processes and also further in implementing these decisions.

Fig. 2. Components of an ideal remote sensing system

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2.7 Advantages and disadvantages of
remote sensing

2.7.1 Advantages of remote sensing are:

a) Provides data of large areas
b) Provides data of very remote and inaccessible regions
c) Able to obtain imagery of any area over a continuous period of time
through which the any anthropogenic or natural changes in the
landscape can be analyzed
d) Relatively inexpensive when compared to employing a team of
surveyors
e) Easy and rapid collection of data
f) Rapid production of maps for interpretation

2.7.2 Disadvantages of remote sensing are:

a) The interpretation of imagery requires a certain skill level
b) Needs cross verification with ground (field) survey data
c) Data from multiple sources may create confusion
d) Objects can be misclassified or confused
e) Distortions may occur in an image due to the relative motion of
sensor and source

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 Chapter 3
Role of Remote Sensing in
Land Use and Land Cover Modelling

23
3.1 Introduction
Land use and land cover (LULC) changes have been among the most
significant noticeable human modification of Earth's terrestrial
surface. Land surfaces comprising the physical and biological entities
including vegetative cover, water bodies, bare lands or artificial
structures represent land cover. Alternatively, land use refers to an
intricate combination of socio-economic, management principles and
economic purposes and its contexts for and within which lands are
managed. We often designate land use and land cover together, but
there is a distinct difference between the two. Land cover especially
implies the spatial distribution of the various classes of land cover that
can be assessed both qualitatively as well as quantitatively through
remote sensing techniques, while land use mainly focuses on human
activities determined by the integration of natural and social scientific
methods in various landscapes even having same land cover. LULC
change is possibly the most obvious form of global environmental
change visible at spatial and temporal scales having great relevance to
our daily life. Technically, LULC change is directly related with the
mean quantitative changes in spatial extent (increase or decrease) for a
specified type of land cover and land use respectively. Both
anthropogenic and environmental forces largely affect the behavior of
changes in land use and land cover (Liu et al, 2009). The land
use/cover changes have been extensive in the past several decades in
the North-Eastern region leading to environmental degradation. Nandy
et al. 2006 reported that Jhum cultivation in the eastern region has
disrupted the ecological balance of the region due to soil erosion
resulting from reduction of Jhum cycle. Understanding the changes in
LULC and subsequent modelling is critical to the prediction of future
land use change scenarios.

24
3.2 Need for estimation of land use and land
cover change
For inclusive growth and development in various spheres and sectors,
food and water security for the growing population needs to be met
and issues emerging from climate change, need to be addressed. The
pressure on the Indian land mass is almost 4–6 times the global
average as Indian land area is only 2.3 % of global terrestrial area but
harbours 17% of the global population and 11% of the global livestock.
In the last 40 years the area under crop has almost remained constant
at around 1402.0 Mha. Over the decades, there was phenomenal
change in the pattern of land use land covers. The various impact of
LULC includes decrease in vegetation cover, biodiversity loss, climate
change, carbon dynamics, environmental pollution and changes in
hydrological regimes. There are different factors which greatly affect
land cover and land use. Various environmental factors like soil
characteristics, climate, topography, and vegetation determine land
cover and simultaneously land use is determined by demographic
factors such as population, technology, political structures, economy,
and systems of ownership, attitudes and values.

3.3 Remote sensing as a tool for land use and

land cover change
There is ample collection of data produced from remote sensing and
vary from the very high-spatial resolution images (such as CartoSat,
IKONOS and Quickbird), to regional datasets produced at regular
intervals (e.g., LISS III, TM/ETM, SPOT), to lower spatial resolution
(>250 m) images now produced daily across the entire Earth (e.g.,
MODIS). The temporal dynamics of the synoptic view of the earth’s
surface by satellite assisted data capture has given us an important
tool to study the variations in land use and land cover over a period of
time. The changes in the land use and land cover manifested as a
function of the changes either natural or manmade, have a bearing on
the reflectance patterns of incidence radiation due to the changes in

25
the vegetative cover, soil moisture or the various modifications of the
earth’s surface. Since the changes in land use and land cover are more
or less unidirectional, without much oscillation, it is safe to extrapolate
the changes in spatial extents and also calculate the rate of changes. A
very important tool in this regard is the Geographical Information
System (GIS). The Geographic Information System is a powerful tool in
which spatial information can be stored, organized, and retrieved in a
user friendly environment. The Conjunction of satellite remote sensing
data and ancillary data in a GIS environment combined with the
Global positioning system (GPS) data is a potential tool to environment
management.

3.4 Use of Remote-Sensing Data in LULC Modeling

Remote sensing data of both historical and present time are extremely
important for evaluating and monitoring changes in LULC parameters
which are quite helpful in modelling LULC through scenario
development, driving-force analysis, model parameterization, and
model validation.

3.5 Conclusions
Remote sensing is a very important tool for studying the change
analysis of land use and land cover. LULC change negatively affects
the patterns of climate and socio-economic dynamics in global and
local scale. LULC models that link remote-sensing information with
social data can greatly increase understanding of the primary drivers
of LULC change. There is a vast scope of research on modelling LULC
change dynamics over North-Eastern part of India that can give an
insight of future projections on land use change.

26
 References:
1.Agarwal, C., Green, G. M., Grove, J. M., Evans, T. P. and Schweik, C.
M., (2002). A Review and Assessment of Land-Use Change Models:
Dynamics of Space, Time, and Human Choice. General Technical
Report NE-297. Newtown Square, Pennsylvania: U.S. Department of
Agriculture, Forest Service, Northeastern Research Station. 61 pp.
2.Berry, Michael W., Hazen, Brett C., MacIntyre, Rhonda L., Flamm,
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Tropical Geography 27:82–101.
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 Chapter 4
Ant based supervised land use
map generation from
remotely sensed image

28
 Proposed Methodology:
In this section we will present how land use map can be generated
from a given multispectral remotely sensed images in supervised
manner using the concept of aggregation pheromone density.

4.1 Supervised method:

In order to make use of the multitude of digital data available from
satellite imagery, it must be processed in a manner that is suitable for
the end user. For many projects this processing includes categorizing
the land into its various use functions. There are two main categories
that can be used to achieve this outcome and they are called
Supervised and Unsupervised Classification techniques. In supervised
land classification, the individual processing the imagery, guides the
image processing method(includes using any language software, here
we have used python and imported related libraries for processing
image) to help it decide how to classify certain features.

In supervised classification, spectral signatures are developed from

specified locations in the image. These specified locations are given the
generic name 'training sites' and are defined by the user. The training sites
will help the language module develop spectral signatures for the outlined
areas. The land use categories of interest in the image that we took (IRS-
1A Calcutta) are Turbid Water (TW), Pure Water (PW), Habitat (HAB),
Concrete Area (CA), Vegetation (VEG), and Open Space (OS). Multiple
polygons are created for each land use category to help ensure that the
manipulating module has sufficient information to create the spectral
signatures.

Once the training sites are developed, concerning module can use this
information, along with the various images of different bandwidths, to
create spectral signatures from the specified areas. These signatures will
then be used to classify all pixels in the scene. There are two basic groups
of classifiers that are used in supervised classification module. They are
called hard classifiers and soft classifiers. Hard classifiers assign each
29
pixel in the scene a discrete value or category based on the training sites
in the vector layer. For example, if six different land use types were
identified with the training sites, each pixel in the scene will take on the
value of one of those six land uses. If soft classifiers are used, probabilities
may be listed as to which category each pixel may or may not belong to. In
other words, definitive decisions about land categories are not made. The
AREA module in this classification was then used to view the statistics
concerning each land cover group. We have plotted a pie-chart displaying
percentage of area accumulated by each of the six categories.

4.1.1 Aggregation pheromone density based classification:

Consider a data set with m classes, which (by our assumption) forms m
homogeneous groups/colonies of ants or training patterns. Let x1, x2,
x3, ..., x|Ci| be the training data patterns in the class Ci and considered as
a population of |Ci|-ants a1, a2, a3, ..., a|Ci| which forms a
group/colony Ci; where an ant aj ∈ Ci represents the training data
pattern xj . The intensity of pheromone emitted by an individual ant
aj (located at xj) decreases with its distance from xj. Thus the
pheromone intensity at a point closer to xj is more than those at other
points that are farther from it. To achieve this, the pheromone intensity
emitted by ant aj ∈ Ci is modeled by a Gaussian distribution. The
pheromone intensity deposited at x by an ant aJ (located at xj) is thus
computed as

Δτ(aj , x) = exp− d(xj ,x)2 /2δ2 ,where, δ denotes the spread of Gaussian
function and d(xj , x) is the Euclidean distance between xj and x.

Total aggregation pheromone density at x deposited by the entire

population of |Ci| ants belonging to the colony Ci is computed as

Δτi (x) = Σxj∈Ci exp− d(xj ,x)2 /2δ2 .

30
 Now a new (test pattern) ant at at xt appears in the system. The average
aggregation pheromone density (at the location of that new ant at) by
the colony Ci is given by

Δτ i (xt) = 1 / |Ci| Σ xj∈Ci exp− d(xj ,xt)2 /2δ2 .

The new ant at will move towards a colony for which the average
aggregation pheromone density (at the location of that new ant) is higher
than that of other colonies. Hence finally that ant will join the colony
determined by the following equation

ColonyLabel(xt) = arg maxi (Δτ i(xt)).

Thus each of the test ants will join a colony and that colony label
will be the class label of that test pattern (ant).The proposed
supervised aggregation pheromone density based classification
(APC) algorithm is given below:

4.2 Algorithm:
Aggregation pheromone density based classifier
1: for each new (test) ant at located at xt do
2: for each colony Ci do
3: Calculate the average aggregation pheromone density at
location (xt) due to (all ant in) colony Ci using equation 3.

4: end for

5: Compute the ColonyLabel(xt) of the ant at by equation 4.

// Ties are broken arbitrarily.

6: end for

31
 Fig 4.1 Histogram equilized image of IRS-1A calcutta

IRS-1A Calcutta image was acquired by Indian Remote Sensing Satellite.

The image covers an area around the city of Calcutta having six major
land-cover classes: pure water (PW), turbid water (TW), concrete area
(CON), habitation (HAB), vegetation (VEG), and open spaces (OS). The
original images have poor illumination and very low contrast and are
not properly visible. Therefore we have shown one (histogram
equalized based) enhanced image instead of showing the original
image.

4.3 Implementing supervised method in IRS-1A

IRS-1A Calcutta image considered here are labelled partially. Only 375
pixel are labelled and labelled pixels are distributed in the six land use
class mentioned earlier. These labelled pixels act as training patterns
and rest is considered as test patterns.

32
Land use map of IRS-1A Calcutta image generated by
proposed supervised APC method:

33
 Conclusion
By simply visually analyzing the images created using the supervised
classification technique, We find that Human error digitizing, lack of
knowledge of study area, and other factors all contribute to inaccurate
results in the supervised classification method. In any case, the
resulting images are useful for some applications such as generating
estimates on relative presence of water bodies, agricultural land use,
and concrete areas. If more accurate results are desired, additional
processing to tease out specific land use patterns may be possible by
detailed examination of the image and data. This technique requires
more work and may not produce results that better represent what is
actually present in the field. When using any classification technique,
it is best to use additional references of the study area rather than only
the satellite imagery. Without comparing these images to maps, aerial
photographs, and actual visits to the study area, features actually
present cannot be determined.

34
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