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Remote Sensing Letters

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A new index for mapping built-up and

bare land areas from Landsat-8 OLI
data
a ab a a ac
Yi Zhou , Guang Yang , Shixin Wang , Litao Wang , Futao Wang
ab
& Xiongfei Liu
a
Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy
of Sciences, Beijing, China
b
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
c
Guangxi Key Laboratory of Spatial Information and Geomatics,
Guilin, China
Published online: 20 Oct 2014.

To cite this article: Yi Zhou, Guang Yang, Shixin Wang, Litao Wang, Futao Wang & Xiongfei Liu
(2014) A new index for mapping built-up and bare land areas from Landsat-8 OLI data, Remote
Sensing Letters, 5:10, 862-871, DOI: 10.1080/2150704X.2014.973996

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/2150704X.2014.973996

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 Remote Sensing Letters, 2014
Vol. 5, No. 10, 862–871, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/2150704X.2014.973996

A new index for mapping built-up and bare land areas from Landsat-8
OLI data
Yi Zhoua, Guang Yanga,b*, Shixin Wanga, Litao Wanga, Futao Wanga,c, and Xiongfei Liua,b
a
Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China;
b
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China; cGuangxi Key Laboratory of Spatial
Information and Geomatics, Guilin, China
(Received 19 May 2014; accepted 2 October 2014)
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Remote sensing is a useful technology for monitoring the spatial distribution and
expansion of built-up and bare land areas. One effective approach, known as the
normalized difference built-up index (NDBI), has been promoted for identifying built-
up areas based on Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM)/Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM+)
data. The successful launch of the Landsat-8 satellite has made possible the continued
acquisition of high-quality data that meet requirements for observing land use and land
cover (LULC), and whether or not NDBI approach can be used with Landsat-8 data
needs further verification. In this study, we researched the reflectance spectral character-
istics of different land cover types in different bands of Landsat-8 operational land
imager (OLI) data and found that the trend of some built-up areas in the OLI data
from the near-infrared band to the shortwave infrared band is different from that in the
TM/ETM+ data. This different trend made the conventional NDBI approach unsuitable
for Landsat-8 OLI data. We propose a new index, called the build-up and bare land areas
index, for transforming Landsat-8 OLI data to map built-up and bare land areas auto-
matically. This new index was used to detect the built-up and bare land areas in
Zhengzhou (Henan, China). The accuracy assessment indicates that our index has
much higher accuracy (90.8%) than the conventional NDBI approach does (57.4%).

1. Introduction
Urbanization, a significant social and economic phenomenon, has been taking place at an
unprecedented scale and rate worldwide (Sun, Wu, et al. 2013). It is also a major force
driving land use and land cover (LULC) changes (Sun, Li, et al. 2013). The LULC
changes are also occurring because of high residential development rates (As-Syakur et al.
2012). Urbanization may also result in more bare land (Zhao and Chen 2005), because
during the process of urbanization, land can be bare for a certain period of time before
being developed (e.g. a construction site). The ability to monitor the built-up land
dynamics and changes in the urban extent in a timely and cost-effective manner is a
highly desirable goal for local communities and decision-makers alike (Xu 2008). Remote
sensing imagery is an ideal tool for monitoring the spatial distribution and growth of
urban built-up areas because of its capacity to offer timely and synoptic views of land
cover (Guindon, Zhang, and Dillabaugh 2004; Griffiths et al. 2010).
Remote sensing data can be divided into four types: low, moderate, high and very high
spatial resolution. The advantage of low spatial resolution data (such as data from the
Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer and the Moderate Resolution Imaging
Spectroradiometer) is that it covers continuous periods of time and is available at no

*Corresponding author. Email: sunshinezdd@126.com

© 2014 Taylor & Francis

 Remote Sensing Letters 863

cost. However, the coarse spatial resolution hinders the detailed extraction of urban areas
(Huang, Shi, and Shi 2013). In high and very high spatial resolution data (such as data
from IKONOS, QuickBird, Système Pour l'Observation de la Terre and WorldView
satellites), the structure, shape, texture and other ground object information are very
prominent, but their costs and availability of time series should be considered.
Moderate resolution data (such as data from Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM)/Enhanced
Thematic Mapper (ETM+)) do not provide clear shape characteristics of urban objects
(e.g. buildings), but it does have the most advantages of the three data types mentioned
above. From the launching of Landsat-1 (23 July 1972) to the launching of Landsat-8 (11
February 2013), Landsat represents the world's longest continuously acquired collection
of space-based moderate-resolution land remote sensing data. These four decades of
imagery provide a unique resource for those working in agriculture, geology, forestry,
regional planning, education, mapping and global change research. Landsat images are
also an invaluable resource for emergency response and disaster relief.
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Many scholars have used Landsat TM/ETM+ data to study methods for extracting built-
up areas and areas of bare land, and found it hard to verify the distribution of built-up areas
versus bare land areas (Zha, Gao, and Ni 2003; He et al. 2010). Yang and Zhou (2000) used
TM data to analyse the spectral features of residential areas and the other land use types. Zha,
Gao, and Ni (2003) and Zha, Ni, and Yang (2003) proposed the normalized difference built-up
index (NDBI) for mapping urban built-up areas automatically without using training samples.
The absence of training samples from the mapping made subjective intervention from the
human analyst redundant. This index is based on the spectral response of built-up lands,
which have higher reflectance in the shortwave infrared (SWIR1) wavelength range (for
example, band 5 of TM data (TM5)) than in the near-infrared (NIR) wavelength range (for
example band 4 of TM data (TM4)) (Equation (1)). However, some vegetative covers also
have the same trend from SWIR1 band to NIR band, depending upon the surrounding pixel
environs. Since some vegetative covers are mistakenly grouped into the built-up category, the
extracted built-up areas’ information using the NDBI is often mixed with plant noise.
Therefore, Zha, Gao, and Ni (2003) recoded the derived NDBI and normalized difference
vegetation index (NDVI) images, and considered that the difference between the values of the
binary NDBI and the binary NDVI would indicate built-up areas (Equation (2)).
There is an assumption in the NDBI that a positive NDBI value should indicate built-
up areas and a positive NDVI value should indicate vegetation. This assumption results in
the incorrect identification of built-up regions, as bare land areas also have a positive
NDBI value. He et al. (2010) proposed a method to eliminate this flawed original
assumption and thus improved the NDBI using a semiautomatic segmentation approach,
but this approach depended on a manually selected training sample. Varshney (2013)
adopted an automated kernel-based thresholding algorithm to sort the difference values of
a multi-temporal built-up image into built-up and no-built-up change regions. Xu (2008)
proposed an index-based built-up index for the rapid extraction of built-up land features
from ETM+ imagery. As-Syakur et al. (2012) adopted the Enhanced Built-Up and
Bareness Index (EBBI) to transform ETM+ data and map built-up and bare land areas.
However, there were some limitations when using a single EBBI to distinguish between
homogenous bare land and heterogeneous bare land mixed with drier vegetation or
heterogeneous bare land in urban areas. The NDBI approach and the other proposed
approaches mentioned above were only proposed for TM/ETM+ data.
On 11 February 2013, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration launched the Landsat-8 satellite. The Landsat-8 bands
had been redefined (Table 1), so whether or not the conventional NDBI approach and the new
 864 Y. Zhou et al.

Table 1. Band designations for the Landsat satellites.

OLI and TIRS TM ETM+

Band Wavelength Resolution Band Wavelength Resolution Band Wavelength Resolution

Channel number (μm) (m) number (μm) (m) number (μm) (m)

Coastal 1 0.43–0.45 30
aerosol
Blue 2 0.45–0.51 30 1 0.45–0.52 30 1 0.45–0.52 30
Green 3 0.53–0.59 30 2 0.52–0.60 30 2 0.52–0.60 30
Red 4 0.64–0.67 30 3 0.63–0.69 30 3 0.63–0.69 30
NIR 5 0.85–0.88 30 4 0.76–0.90 30 4 0.77–0.90 30
SWIR1 6 1.57–1.65 30 5 1.55–1.75 30 5 1.55–1.75 30
SWIR2 7 2.11–2.29 30 7 2.08–2.35 30 7 2.09–2.35 30
Panchromatic 8 0.50–0.68 15 8 0.52–0.90 15
Cirrus 9 1.36–1.38 30
Thermal 10 10.60–11.19 100
infrared 6 10.40–12.50 120 6 10.40–12.50 60
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11 11.50–12.51 100

improved NDBI approach may be effectively applied to Landsat-8 data remains to be

determined. No relevant research work has yet been reported. This study researched the
applicability of the conventional NDBI approach to the operational land imager (OLI) data
and proposes a new index for extracting built-up and bare land area information from OLI
data. Finally, in this study, we evaluated the accuracy of the proposed approach.

2. Study area and data pre-processing

2.1. Study area
The study was conducted in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province, China, which is
located at 34° 16′–34° 58′ N latitude and 112° 42′–114° 13′ E longitude (Figure 1). It is
the political, economic and cultural centre of Henan, and is also the central city of the
Central Henan Urban Agglomeration and Central Plains Economic Region (CPER).
Zhengzhou is bordered by the Yellow River to the north, Mount Song to the west and
Huang-Huai plain to the east. The annual average temperature is about 14°C, it has a
continental climate, and the average monthly rainfall is 640.9 mm. Zhengzhou has six
districts, and since the Shangjie district is not connected with the main urban area of
Zhengzhou, we chose the other five districts as our study area.

2.2. Data and pre-processing

The Landsat-8 satellite carries two push-broom instruments: the OLI, and the Thermal
Infrared Sensor (TIRS). The band boundaries of the Landsat-8 data differ from those of the
TM/ETM+ data (Table 1). The spectral bands of the OLI sensor provide an enhancement from
prior Landsat instruments, due to the addition of two new spectral bands: a deep blue visible
channel (band 1) specifically designed for water resources and coastal zone investigation, and
a new infrared channel (band 9) for the detection of cirrus cloud (Chu et al. 2013).
The remote sensing data used in this study were the Landsat-8 OLI data acquired on 7
August 2013 in Path 124 and Row 36 (download address: http://glovis.usgs.gov/). The spectral
wavelength ranges and the spatial resolution bands of the data are showed in Table 1. The data
are a standard Landsat Level 1T (L1T) product. The L1T data product provides systematic
radiometric accuracy, as well as geometric accuracy by incorporating ground control points. It
 Remote Sensing Letters 865

0 1000 2000 km
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0 100 200 km 0 5 10 km

Figure 1. Location of Henan province within China and the city of Zhengzhou within Henan. The
third map shows the different districts of the city comprising the study area.

also employs a DEM for topographic accuracy. The geodetic accuracy of the product depends
on the accuracy of the ground control points and the resolution of the DEM used.
The first pre-processing step is radiometric calibration to obtain the radiance data of
different ground objects. The Fast Line-of-sight Atmospheric Analysis of Spectral
Hypercubes (FLAASH) model is an atmospheric correction method that can eliminate
the influence of atmospheric scattering. The retrieval of surface reflectance from the
FLAASH-corrected image pixels, in general, has produced high scores in spectral para-
meter analyses (Kayadibi and Aydal 2013). Therefore, we used the FLAASH model to
make the atmospheric correction. Finally, we used vector data of the region of interest to
cut the real reflectance data in order to acquire the OLI data of Zhengzhou.
All the spatial data were projected into the Universal Transverse Mercator projection
(zone: 49N) with reference to World Geodetic System 1984 (WGS84) datum.

3. Methodology
3.1. NDBI index
Built-up and bare land areas display a drastic increment in their reflectance from the NIR
band to the SWIR1 band in the TM/ETM+ data. So when a pixel's NDBI value is greater
than zero, it can be identified as either a built-up or bare land area. As vegetation has a
slightly larger or smaller DN value on the SWIR1 band than on the NIR band (Zha, Gao,
and Ni 2003), the extracted built-up land information using the NDBI is often mixed with
plant noise, and the use of NDVI is necessary to filter out the noise. Built-up and bare land
areas can be distinguished based on a calculation that uses three bands of TM/ETM+ data:
red, NIR and SWIR1. We used OLI data to research the applicability of the conventional
NDBI approach. The red, NIR and SWIR1 bands of the OLI data are bands 4, 5 and 6.
ROLI4, ROLI5 and ROLI6 refer to the reflectance of the OLI data in bands 4, 5 and 6, and then
continuous NDBI/NDVI images may be obtained through Equations (1) and (2):
 866 Y. Zhou et al.

ROLI6  ROLI5
NDBI ¼ (1)
ROLI6 þ ROLI5

ROLI5  ROLI4
NDVI ¼ : (2)
ROLI5 þ ROLI4

Next, the derived NDBI and NDVI images were recoded to create binary images, where a
value of 0 represents pixels having a negative value and a value of 1 indicates those having
a positive value. The built-up and bare land areas were extracted by the following equation:

B ¼ NDBIb  NDVIb (3)

NDBIb and NDVIb represent the binary NDBI and NDVI images, and B denotes the
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recoded binary image with only the built-up and barren pixels having positive values, so
built-up and bare land areas can be mapped automatically.

3.2. The new index for OLI data

Analysing the main land cover types of Zhengzhou is the first step in mapping built-up
and bare land areas. Land cover types in Zhengzhou include three main classes: built-up
areas, water body and vegetation (Lu 2008). Based on visual observation, bare land
should be considered as one of the main classes as well. Land cover types in
Zhengzhou are divided into the following eight subclasses: (1) blue-roofed built-up
areas (mainly factory sheds, etc.); (2) red-roofed built-up areas (mainly rural residential
areas and factory sheds, etc.); (3) grey-roofed built-up areas (mainly city/rural residential
areas and roads, etc.); (4) bare land; (5) lake (artificial lakes and reservoirs); (6) river; (7)
farmland (cover crops); and (8) woodland. Subclasses 1–3 are built-up areas, subclass 4 is
bare land, subclasses 5 and 6 are water body, and subclasses 7 and 8 are vegetation. By
selecting the sample points of different subclasses, we can obtain the spectral profiles of
the eight subclasses in the study area, as showed in Figure 2.
For this study, bands 1–7 of OLI data have been used to obtain the spectral profiles.
Band 8 of the OLI data is a panchromatic band, while band 9 is used to detect cirrus
clouds, so bands 8 and 9 were eliminated.

60 Blue-roofed built-up areas

Red-roofed built-up areas
50 Gray-roofed built-up areas
Bare land
Lake
Reflectance (%)

40 River
Farmland
Woodland
30

20

10

0
band1 band2 band3 band4 band5 band6 band7
OLI spectral band

Figure 2. Spectral profiles of eight typical land cover types in the study area.
 Remote Sensing Letters 867

In this study, by analysing the spectral profiles of the eight typical land cover types in
Zhengzhou, we found a regular pattern: the reflectance of the blue-roofed built-up areas in band
2 (blue band) is greater than that in band 3 (green band). The reflectance of the red/grey-roofed
built-up areas in band 2 is almost equal to that in band 3. The reflectance of the water body and
vegetation in band 2 is less than that in band 3. So, in this study, the index NDBIOLI2–OLI3 was
introduced to extract the blue-roofed built-up areas and part of the red/grey-roofed built-up areas
(Equation (4)). In band 4, only the reflectance of the red/grey-roofed built-up and bare land areas
is greater than the reflectance in band 3. So, we introduced the index NDBIOLI4–OLI3 to extract
the red/grey-roofed built-up and bare land areas (Equation (5)). ROLI2, ROLI3 and ROLI4 are the
reflectance of the OLI data in bands 2, 3 and 4, respectively.

ROLI2  ROLI3
NDBIOLI2OLI3 ¼ (4)
ROLI2 þ ROLI3
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ROLI4  ROLI3
NDBIOLI4OLI3 ¼ : (5)
ROLI4 þ ROLI3

Under the rule that a value of 0 represents pixels having a negative value and a value of 1
indicates those having a positive value, the NDBIOLI2–OLI3, b and NDBIOLI4–OLI3, b binary
images were obtained from NDBIOLI2–OLI3 and NDBIOLI4–OLI3. The derived binary
images were then recoded to create a new binary image using Equation (6). The BBIOLI
denotes a new binary image with only built-up areas (including blue-roofed, red-roofed
and grey-roofed built-up areas) and bare land area pixels having positive sum values.

BBIOLI ¼ NDBIOLI2OLI3; b þ NDBIOLI4OLI3; b (6)

The derived NDBIOLI2–OLI3 and NDBIOLI4–OLI3 images were recoded to create a new
binary image based on the rules in Table 2. BBIOLI denotes a binary image with only
built-up and bare land area pixels having positive sum values.
The Yellow River flows through Zhengzhou. Due to the fact that the Yellow River
carries large amounts of sediment, the spectral characteristics of the Yellow River are
somewhat similar to those of bare land in the visible light band. The purpose of this study
is to extract built-up and bare land areas’ information in Zhengzhou, so we masked the
Yellow River through the low reflectance characteristic of the OLI data in band 5.

4. Results and accuracy assessment

The accuracy of the BBIOLI approach and the conventional NDBI approach was then
compared using the Landsat-8 OLI data for Zhengzhou (Figure 3(a)–(c)).

Table 2. Pixel values after summing and binary recoding based on the BBIOLI approach.

Blue- Red- Grey-

roofed roofed roofed
built-up built-up built- Bare
areas areas up areas land Lake River Farmland Woodland

NDBIOLI2–OLI3, b 1 0 or 1 0 or 1 0 0 0 0 0
NDBIOLI4–OLI3, b 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
BBIOLI 1 1 or 2 1 or 2 1 0 0 0 0
 868 Y. Zhou et al.

(a) (b) (c)

(a) BBIOLI Legend
0 5 10 km (b) NDBI Built-up areas
(c) NDBIb–NDVIb No-built-up areas
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Figure 3. Comparison of results using the BBIOLI and conventional NDBI approaches. (a), (b) and
(c) are the binary images of the built-up and non-built-up areas using the BBIOLI, NDBI and
NDBIb–NDVIb approaches, respectively.

As has been shown in methodology section, only built-up and bare land area pixels have
positive BBIOLI and B values, so all pixels are classified as being either a built-up area (including
bare land) or non-built-up area. In order to evaluate the accuracy of the BBI approach, 500
sample points were selected randomly from the study area's OLI data (Figure 4).
These 500 random sample points were classified through visual interpretation of the
OLI data. Tables 2 and 4 are the rules to create BBIOLI and B binary images, respectively.
Pixels having positive values are classified as built-up areas (including bare land), while
pixels having negative values are classified as non-built-up areas. Table 3 shows an
accuracy assessment of the BBIOLI approach as compared with the NDBI approach.
The NDBIb values of grey-roofed built-up areas in Table 4 are 0 or 1, and this causes

0 5 10 km

Figure 4. Location of the 500 random sample points within the Zhengzhou study area.
 Remote Sensing Letters 869

Table 3. Accuracy assessment of the resultant images.

Overall accuracy (%) Commission error (%) Omission error (%)

NDBI approach 57.4 71.17 20.59

BBIOLI approach 90.8 9.21 9.96

Note: The overall accuracy is calculated by adding the total number of correctly classified pixels divided by the
total number of pixels. Commission error represents percentage of pixels that belong to non-built-up areas but
has been classified as built-up areas. Omission error represents percentage of pixels that belong to built-up areas
but has been classified as non-built-up areas.

Table 4. Pixel values after differencing and binary recoding based on the conventional NDBI
approach.

Blue- Red- Grey-

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roofed roofed roofed

built-up built-up built-up Bare
areas areas areas land Lake River Farmland Woodland

NDBIb 1 1 0 or 1 0 or 1 0 0 0 0
NDVIb 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1
NDBIb–NDVIb 0 0 −1 or 0 −1 or 0 0 0 −1 −1

that the NDBI approach could not extract all the grey-roofed built-up areas which make
up most of the built-up areas (Figure 3(b)). The NDBIb–NDVIb values of all land cover
types in Table 4 are 0 or −1. It also causes built-up areas, bare land, water body and
vegetation could not be differentiated using the NDBIb–NDVIb approach (Figure 3(c)).
That means the NDBIb–NDVIb approach cannot extract built-up areas, so an accuracy
assessment and comparison of this approach were not done. The proposed BBI method is
able to map built-up and bare land areas with an overall accuracy level of 90.8%.

5. Discussion and conclusions

Based on visual interpretation, the built-up areas of Zhengzhou can be divided into three
types: (1) blue-roofed built-up areas; (2) red-roofed built-up areas; and (3) grey-roofed
built-up areas. The derived NDBIb–NDVIb images are recoded to create a binary image
based on the rules of Table 4.
We compared in detail the results of the conventional NDBI approach with the
proposed BBIOLI approach (Figure 5). The conventional NDBI approach could not extract
the airport from the OLI data, while the proposed BBIOLI approach did. The comparison
agreed with the results showed in Tables 2 and 4, so we conclude that the conventional
NDBI approach is not suitable for using OLI data to map built-up and bare land areas.
Based on the spectral analysis conducted in this study, we constructed NDBIOLI2–OLI3
to extract the blue-roofed built-up areas and part of the red/grey-roofed built-up areas, and
we also constructed NDBIOLI4–OLI3 to extract the red/grey-roofed built-up and bare land
areas. According to the results in Table 2, summation of NDBIOLI2–OLI3, b and NDBIOLI4–
OLI3, b will lead to only the built-up and bare land areas having positive values while all
other land covers will have a value of 0. As such, we propose the use of the BBIOLI
approach to extract built-up and bare land area information from the OLI data of
Zhengzhou. With this approach, all mapped land covers are categorized into only two
 870 Y. Zhou et al.

113° 42′ 33″ E 113° 42′ 51″ E

34° 52′ 07″ N

34° 52′ 07″ N

Legend
Built-up areas

34° 51′ 25″ N

34° 51′ 25″ N

Non-built-up areas

0 0.5 1 km
113° 42′ 33″ E 113° 42′ 51″ E
(a)

(b) (c)
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Figure 5. Detailed comparison of results by the conventional NDBI and proposed BBIOLI
approaches. (a) Shows an airport in the study area (true colour composite of OLI data bands 4
(red), 3 (green) and 2 (blue)), (b) shows the results of the conventional NDBI approach and
(c) shows the results of the proposed BBIOLI approach. The areas in the yellow rectangles show
areas where the conventional NDBI approach produced obvious errors.

groups: built-up areas and non-built-up areas. The conventional NDBI approach did not
extract the built-up and bare land areas well as showed in the yellow rectangles of Figure
5, while the BBI OLI approach had no such problems. Therefore, the commission error
would be reduced by using the BBI OLI approach. The lower commission error of the
BBIOLI approach, as compared with that of the conventional NDBI approach, accounts for
its greatly improved accuracy. The experimental results showed that the overall accuracy
of our proposed approach is 90.8% – over 30% higher accuracy than when using the
conventional NDBI approach. The BBIOLI approach is a very effective method for
automatically mapping built-up and bare land areas from Landsat-8 OLI data.
Nevertheless, just as with the conventional NDBI approach, the proposed approach
also has some limitations. First of all, because bare land spectral reflectance values are
similar to those of built-up areas, the BBIOLI approach is unable to separate built-up areas
from large areas of bare land that has no relationship with urbanization (such as farmland
after harvesting). In this study, we choose OLI data acquired in the month of August, so
those types of bare land cover make up only a small proportion of the study area, and their
influence on the study's accuracy can be ignored. A method for removing bare land
information must be developed. Secondly, the BBIOLI approach is proposed solely for
Landsat-8 OLI data. Whether or not this approach is applicable to other data sources has
yet to be determined. Besides, we only use one city to develop the index; thus, the
transferability of the index to other places is not known. We will improve our index and
extend to more cities to check the transferability of the index in future research.

Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the editor and three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments
and suggestions. The Landsat-8 OLI data were obtained from the Earth Resources Observation and
Science Center (EROS) of the USGS.
 Remote Sensing Letters 871

Funding
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant
No.41301501], the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant No.41201441], the
National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant No. 41371363] and Guangxi Key
Laboratory of Spatial Information and Geomatics [Grant No. 1207115-18].

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