Received 30 May 2023, accepted 6 July 2023, date of publication 10 July 2023, date of current version 18 July 2023.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/ACCESS.2023.3293828

Machine Learning Algorithms for Satellite Image

Classification Using Google Earth Engine and
Landsat Satellite Data: Morocco Case Study
HAFSA OUCHRA 1, ABDESSAMAD BELANGOUR1 , AND ALLAE ERRAISSI2
1 Laboratory of Information Technology and Modeling LTIM, Faculty of Sciences Ben M’Sik, Hassan II University, Casablanca 28830, Morocco
2 Polydisciplinary Faculty of Sidi Bennour, Chouaib Doukkali University, El Jadida 24000, Morocco

Corresponding author: Hafsa Ouchra (ouchra.hafsa@gmail.com)

ABSTRACT Earth observation data have proven to be a valuable resource of quantitative information that
is more consistent in time and space than traditional land-based surveys. Remote sensing plays a vital role in
collecting data in many aspects of life, whether scientific, economic, or political. Land cover information is
very important in supporting urban planning and decision-making and provides many opportunities for map-
ping and monitoring urban areas. Multiple data sources exist, including satellite data of different resolutions
ranging from very high to medium resolution and aerial and drone image acquisitions. Today, accurate land
cover information is in high demand. Using satellite imagery and remote sensing techniques for planning
and development is becoming a common study conducted by many researchers to find practical solutions to
the many problems affecting our planet. The recovery, management, and analysis of these large amounts of
satellite imagery pose considerable challenges. The classification of satellite images is a very popular and
complex topic. In classification studies over the last decade, researchers have been frequently studying only
those three machine learning algorithms RF, CART, and SVM, applied in cities or countries except Morocco
which poses a great lack of information on the land use of Morocco. To solve these challenges, six machine
learning algorithms were applied and compared to each other based on several evaluation metrics, and then,
to avoid the problems of data download and storage space, we used Google Earth Engine, a geospatial
processing platform that operates in the cloud. It provides free access to substantial satellite data and free
computations to monitor, visualize, and analyze environmental features at the petabyte scale. In this paper,
we used Landsat 8 satellite data to perform a land cover classification of Morocco, applying machine learning
algorithms, which is a subfield of artificial intelligence. This paper proposes an experimental study of six
supervised machine learning algorithms, namely Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random Forest (RF),
Classification and Regression Trees (CART), Minimum Distance (MD), Decision Tree (DT) and Gradient
Tree (GTB), to classify the water areas, built-up areas, cultivated areas, sandy areas, barren areas and forest
areas on the Moroccan territory to deduce at the end the best-performing classifier which has higher accuracy.
The classification results are displayed using a set of accuracy indicators, including overall accuracy (OA),
Kappa, user accuracy (UA), and producer accuracy (PA). We obtained the best accuracy of 0.93 for the
minimum distance (MD) algorithm, but the worst result is 0.74 for the support vector machine (SVM)
algorithm. To improve these results, we added different indices such as normalized difference vegetation
index (NDVI), normalized difference accumulation index (NDBI), bare soil index (BSI), and modified
normalized difference water index (MNDWI). In general, the addition of these indices improves accuracy.
When comparing these classifiers before and after the addition of these indices, Minimum Distance yields
nearly 93% better accuracy. Therefore, we conclude that it was the best-performing classifier among the
other classifiers that can quickly produce more accurate land cover maps, especially for hard-to-reach areas.

INDEX TERMS Remote sensing, satellite image, supervised classification, Google earth engine, LANDSAT
satellite, machine learning algorithms.
I. INTRODUCTION
The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and Earth observation is a modern science that studies the
approving it for publication was Cheng Chin . evolution of the Earth’s environment using remotely
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.
VOLUME 11, 2023 For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 71127

sensed data such as satellite images and aerial
photographs [1].
Remote sensing data can provide an infinite amount of
information about the entire planet. The information derived
from remote sensing can help describe and model the urban
environment, which enables environmental management and
planning, spatial data analysis, etc. [2]. Different applications
of remote sensing include several fields such as urban plan-
ning, agriculture, resource management, mineralogy, etc. [3].
Satellite data are temporally consistent over large areas and
provide information at a wide range of geographic scales [4].
According to the literature [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11],
[12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], the classification of
satellite images is considered a challenging task because sim-
ilar terrestrial subregions and low-level features such as color
and texture descriptors, etc., are found in different image
classes. The main objective of classification is to analyze the
spatial content of the image and assign a land use category.
Regarding classification techniques, machine learning
algorithms, a subfield of artificial intelligence, are used to
automatically extract information from data, it is necessary
to first define the features of the images, i.e., we start with
feature extraction to reduce the number of resources needed
to describe a large dataset, and then we use the machine
learning algorithms such as SVM [19], RF [20], etc. [3], [9].
These algorithms are divided into two types: (i) supervised
algorithms [21], [22], [23] and (ii) unsupervised algorithms,
which involve selecting samples of pixels in an image that
are representative of specific classes, and then using these
training sites as references for classifying all other pixels
in the image [9], [24]. In this study, we use data from
the LANDSAT 8 satellite [25] to apply a classification of
Water, Built-up, Cropped, Sand, Barren, and Forest areas
over the Moroccan territory using supervised classification
methods based on machine learning algorithms. This paper
describes six supervised algorithms such as SVM [19], RF
[20], CART [18], MD [26], DT [18], and Gradient Tree Boost
[27] that we applied to map the land cover of the study
area.
The objective and novelty of our study are based on the
proposed workflow to analyze different Landsat 8 satellite
images and to make a comparison between the used classifi-
cation algorithms to identify the best classification techniques
or algorithms based on their performance: Accuracy, Kappa
coefficient, Producer accuracy, and User accuracy. Our
proposed work method is fully developed in the GEE environ-
ment, exploiting all its potential to test different combinations
of variables and obtain a solid data collection to improve
each step of supervised classification and to optimize the
acquisition of input data and thus achieve the highest levels
of accuracy.
The use of Landsat 8 satellite composite image captures
much of the spectral variability but has some criticisms such
as data download and storage space required. To avoid these
issues, we used Google Earth Engine (GEE), a free cloud-
based computing platform that allows users to access, view,
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and analyze satellite imagery at the petabyte scale. It is widely
used for land cover classification at regional, national, and
global scales [28], [29].
Among the gaps that exist in this field of research is a lack
of works that deal with land use mapping for the Moroccan
territory and also the use of superior machine learning algo-
rithms apart from these three algorithms RF, SVM, and CART
which are frequently used in most previous works [30], [31],
[32], [33], [34].
This paper is structured as follows: Section I-A presents
the study area and the data used; Section II describes the
methodology of our experiment; Section III shows the inter-
pretation of the results of the methods used; Section IV
presents a discussion of the results of our experiment; and
finally, in Section V, we conclude.
A. STUDY AREA
Morocco is a North African country that is highly vulnerable
to climate change, located between 31◦ 47’ 30.127’’ N and
7◦ 5’ 33.43’’ W, and its surface area covers 710,850 km2 . The
Moroccan territory is also bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to
the west and the Mediterranean Sea to the north. It shares
maritime borders with Algeria and Spain (Ceta and Mellilia)
as shown in Figure 1.
It is characterized by four types of climates: humid, sub-
humid, semi-arid, and arid. Morocco is a country with a great
diversity of landscapes: mountains, deserts, plains, plateaus,
oases, etc. . . In the country of Morocco, the mountains occupy
more than two-thirds of the Moroccan territory and contain
four main chains [35]: the Rif in the North, the Middle Atlas
in the East, the High Atlas, and the Anti-Atlas. The plains are
often very extensive and stretch from the Rif Mountains to
the Middle Atlas. In the south of the country, we have the Erg
Chebbi the second largest expanse of stone and sand in the
interior of Morocco after the Erg Chegaga. Some dunes can
reach 200 m in height.
The Moroccan coastline is diverse in nature as it con-
sists of both the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the
Atlantic Ocean to the west. With a total of 3,500 km of
coastline, Morocco is the country with the largest coastline
on the African continent [36]: it has 512 km of coastline on
the Mediterranean and 2,934 km on the Atlantic Ocean. It
has several rivers and wadis such as Bouregreg, Moulouya,
Ouargha, Oum Errabiâ, Ourika, Sebou, Souss, Tensift, Drâa,
Oued Guir, Oued Souss. The large rivers such as the Oum
Errabiâ, the Moulouya, the Sebou, and the Bouregreg have
very variable flows between seasons, and from year to
year.
Morocco has twelve regions, each headed by a wali,
as well as a Regional Council, representing the region’s
vital forces. These regions have the status of local author-
ities. The twelve regions are Tangier-Tetouan-Al Hoceima,
Oriental, Fez-Meknes, Rabat-Salé-Kénitra, Béni Mellal-
Khénifra, Casablanca-Settat, Marrakech-Safi, Drâa-Tafilalet,
Souss-Massa, Guelmim-Oued Noun, Laâyoune-Sakia el
Hamra and Dakhla-Oued Ed-Dahab.
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Rabat is the administrative and political capital of Morocco
while Casablanca is the economic capital and the largest city
in the country. The seven largest cities in Morocco, accord-
ing to the 2014 general population census, are Casablanca,
Fez, Tangier, Marrakech, Salé, Meknes, and Rabat. The total
population of Morocco is nearly 34 million according to the
2014 census.
FIGURE 1. Image composite from Landsat 8 OLI of Morocco case study.
B4(R), B3(G), B2(B) bands composite image.
B. DATASET
In this study, we used the Landsat 8 collection 1 Tier 1 surface
reflectance. John Barker [37], stated that Landsat observa-
tions are now used in almost every environmental discipline.
Landsat data has been used to monitor water quality, glacier
retreat, sea ice movement, invasive species encroachment,
coral reef health, land use changes, deforestation rates, and
population growth. It has also been used to assess damage
from natural disasters such as fires, floods, tsunamis, etc.
[38]. This dataset is the atmospherically corrected surface
reflectance of Landsat 8 OLI/TIRS sensors. These satel-
lite images contain 5 visible and near-infrared (VNIR) and
2 shortwave infrared (SWIR) bands processed at orthorecti-
fied surface reflectance, and two thermal infrared (TIR) bands
processed at orthorectified brightness temperature. They have
a spatial resolution of 30 meters [25], [39]. These data include
a cloud, shadow, water, and snow mask, as well as a satura-
tion mask per pixel. The collected data bands are grouped
into overlapping ‘‘scenes’’ covering approximately 170 km x
183 km using a standard reference grid [40].
To define our study area on the geographic map, we used
the Large-Scale International Boundary (LSIB) [41] dataset
that was provided by the United States Office of the Geog-
rapher. It is derived from two other datasets: an LSIB line
vector file and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
(NGA) World Vector Shorelines (WVS). In this research,
we are interested in our Moroccan country from Tanger
City to Geuira City. In our study, we merged two codes
‘‘MO’’ and ‘‘WI’’ to extract the Moroccan territory, our study
area.
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II. RELATED WORKS
Integrating AI into GEE enables the platform’s powerful
and scalable infrastructure for processing data and running
machine learning models at a large scale. This facilitates the
automation of monitoring processes, enabling near real-time
analysis of large geographic areas.
In the scientific literature, many researchers have stud-
ied land cover classification using various machine learning
methods, including CART, SVM, Random Forest classifiers,
etc.
Yang et al. [30] cited that the operationalization of
automated monitoring programs based on remote sensing
has many advantages such as Early detection of changes,
Informed decision-making, and Large spatial coverage:
Remote sensing provides information on large geographical
areas, which facilitates the monitoring of large areas, includ-
ing remote or hard-to-reach areas. They confirmed that these
advantages make remote sensing and automated monitoring
valuable tools for natural resource management, development
planning, and decision-making in many areas.
Wahbi et al. [42] showed that over the years, researchers
have been very interested in reliable techniques, methods,
and approaches to generate, extract, and acquire accurate and
useful data and information about settlement areas. They have
evolved from simple algebraic methods to methods based
on artificial intelligence, including Machine Learning and
Deep Learning and, they have shown that the common prob-
lems in image processing are the extraction of information
corresponding to the ground truth and the classification of
images. For this reason, they presented as a solution the
construction of a system capable of correctly assigning a class
to each input image pixel. Yang et al. [43] highlighted the
common use of some remote sensing classification methods
for land cover mapping and crop type identification. Among
these methods are remote sensing classification methods such
as support vector machine (SVM), classification regression
trees (CART), and random forest (RF) algorithms.
Phan et al. [32] showed that higher accuracies were pro-
duced when using time series satellite images than when
using single date images in land cover classification stud-
ies over the past decade. They studied that the availability
of Google Earth Engine (GEE) has attracted the atten-
tion of remote sensing-based applications where temporal
aggregation methods derived from time series images are
widely applied instead of time series images. Moreover, the
researchers’ El Immania et al. [33] confirmed that the use of
the GEE platform was very efficient in terms of computation
and time reduction because it is a cloud-based platform.
According to the literature review [31], [34], [44], there
seems to be a lack of specific research on land cover clas-
sification in Morocco using the Google Earth Engine (GEE)
platform and other algorithms such as the minimum distance
method, gradient tree boost, etc. This finding may indicate
that the field of land cover classification in Morocco is not
well developed. This finding may indicate that the field of
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land cover classification in Morocco, using these specific
methods and the GEE platform, has not been explored thor-
oughly so far. This can be explained by various factors,
such as the lack of suitable data, the limited availability of
specialized tools and resources, and the focus of researchers
on other geographical regions. It is also interesting to note that
most of the research in this area seems to have been conducted
in European and Asian cities, etc., which underscores the
need for further land use studies specifically in Morocco.
This suggests an opportunity for researchers interested in
land cover classification in Morocco, using machine learning
methods and exploiting the advantages of the GEE platform
[45], [46]. Therefore, this paper shows useful research to
contribute to a better classification of land cover in Morocco
using 6 supervised machine learning algorithms apart from
the three most common RF, SVM, and CART algorithms used
in previous works.
FIGURE 2. Workflow recommended in this paper for machine learning
algorithms.
III. METHODOLOGY
The method we proposed, presented in Figure 2 and applied
to the Moroccan territory, was entirely based on the use of the
Google Earth Engine platform environment. Figure 2 shows
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the working methodology. The first part shows the image pro-
cessing step to obtain Landsat 8 satellite composite images
as shown in Figure 1. The third part is the step of feature
selection for creating training data and feature selection for
validation. The fourth part shows all the classification steps
using the supervised classification methods, while the fifth
part is the accuracy comparison step to get the result. The
sections below explain more details about each part.
A. IMAGE PRE-PROCESSING
The image preprocessing step is an essential step that allows
users to create noise-free (cloud) and topographically cor-
rected image composites for a user-defined extent and period
in Google Earth Engine (GEE) [30]. In this work, we obtained
Landsat 8 collection 1 tier 1 [25] satellite composite images
of pixel size 30m of our study area by filtering them by
date to get just the images of the following period of the
year o021 from the month of January until the month of
December (2021-01-01, 2021-12-31). Image preprocessing
can also reduce the model learning time and increase the
inference speed of the algorithm. The composite image we
obtained can then be exported to the user’s Google Drive for
offline use.
B. EXTRACTING FEATURES
Feature extraction is an important step to select the necessary
features that are considered as input for classification algo-
rithms. Large datasets contain many variables that require a
lot of computing resources to process. This step reduces the
number of resources needed while retaining relevant infor-
mation [10]. The importance of this step is to reduce the
number of resources needed for processing without losing
relevant information. In this paper, we collected a set of
geometry points (features) for each category (Water, Built-up,
Cropped, Sand, Barren, and Forest areas) from the composite
image of our study area, then we created the training data
using this collection of features of each category to randomly
divide this training data of 80% for training and 20% for
validation.
TABLE 1. Index spectacles equations.
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TABLE 2. Land cover classes defined for the study.
C. SUPERVISED CLASSIFICATION METHODS
After collecting training data and assembling properties that
store the known class label and numerical values for the
predictors. It is now time to instantiate classifiers and define
their parameters if necessary. In the GEE platform, there
is the ‘‘Classifier’’ package that manages supervised clas-
sification by Machine Learning algorithms. In this work,
we used 6 classifiers (CART, RF, Gradient Tree Boost, DT,
MD, and SVM). In this step, we trained these algorithms
using the training data we constructed, then classified our
composite image collection with specific bands to finally find
a classified map of the study area. Below, we will present an
overview of each classifier or algorithm used in this paper.
Support Vector Machine [26] is a family of machine
learning algorithms that allow for solving classification,
regression, or anomaly detection problems. They are known
for their strong theoretical guarantees, their great flexibility,
and their simplicity of use even without much knowledge
of data mining [18]. Their goal is to separate the data into
classes using a boundary that is as simple as possible so that
the distance between the different groups of data and the
boundary that separates them is maximal. This distance is also
called the ‘‘margin’’ [1].
Minimum distance classification [26] is a special case of
maximum likelihood classification. The classifier calculates
the distance of each pixel to each class mean, in several
standard deviations in the direction of the pixel, and assigns
the pixel to the class with the smallest value according to these
Mahalonobis distance units [4].
Decision tree algorithms [26] create a tree structure by
learning decision rules from the training dataset, and the
parameter used to determine the pixel class. The nodes of the
leaves represent the classes. Features/attributes are indicated
by intermediate nodes. These types of algorithms are used to
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solve problems related to regression and classification. There
are many types of decision tree algorithms such as CART,
C4.5, C5.0, and ID3. They can handle any type of data such as
nonlinear, numerical, and categorical and they are insensitive
to missing values.
The Random Forest method [26] builds multiple decision
trees. It is one of the most widely used algorithms due to its
accuracy, simplicity, and flexibility. The fact that it can be
used for classification and regression tasks, combined with its
non-linear nature, makes it highly adaptable to a wide range
of data and situations. This algorithm is called a ‘‘forest’’
because it generates the growth of a forest of decision trees.
The data from these trees are then merged to ensure the most
accurate predictions. While an isolated decision tree has a
single result and a narrow range of groups, the forest ensures
a more accurate result by relying on a larger number of groups
and decisions. It has the added benefit of adding randomness
to the model by finding the best feature from a random subset
of features.
Gradient Tree Boost [27] is a machine-learning technique
used in classification and regression tasks. It is a popular
method among data scientists because of its accuracy and
speed, especially for big data.
D. ACCURACY ASSESSMENT
A very important step in all classification projects is the
validation and accuracy assessment step. This is an essential
component of modeling and mapping to test the effectiveness
and scientific significance of the models. The objective of this
step is to compare the classified image to another data source
which is ground truth data. To extract the field reality data,
we followed the following process as shown in Figure 2.
The process we followed to evaluate and calculate the
accuracy of each classification method (the accuracy of a
classified map) is to create a set of random points from the
ground truth data sets and compare it to the classified data
(classified map) in a confusion matrix. The latter is a way of
summarizing prediction results for a particular classification
problem. It compares the actual data for a target variable with
those predicted by a model. The correct and false predictions
are revealed and divided by class, allowing them to be com-
pared with defined values. The importance of this matrix is
to know on the one hand the different errors committed by
a prediction algorithm, but more importantly, to know the
different types of errors committed. Tables 3,4,5,6,7 and 8
show the results of the confusion matrix for each classifier.
IV. RESULTS
A. LAND COVER CLASSIFICATION
In this study, Landsat 8 OLI satellite imagery was used for
land cover mapping of our study area. To perform land cover
classification using spectral features, an operation was per-
formed to obtain reflectance data with Landsat 8 OLI image
bands that acquire between January 1, 2021, to December
30, 2021. These images have a pixel size of 30 m as spatial
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TABLE 3. Land cover confusion Matrix or error matrix of Random forest classifier.

TABLE 4. Land cover confusion matrix or error matrix of SVM classifier.

TABLE 5. Land cover confusion matrix or error matrix of Cart classifier.

TABLE 6. Land cover confusion matrix or error matrix of minimum distance classifier.

resolution for bands from B1 to B7 and temporal resolution without computer resources, and data preprocessing, which
is 16 days as the same location image is captured once every facilitates the computation of the heavy feature space used
16 days using the GEE cloud platform that allows us to solve in this work because we have 7 bands of spectral informa-
the problems related to the availability and storage of data tion, in addition to the study area which is characterized by

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TABLE 7. Land cover confusion matrix or error matrix of gradient tree boost classifier.
TABLE 8. Land cover confusion matrix or error matrix of a decision tree classifier.
multiple land cover classes (6 classes) as shown in Table 2,
which takes time in local computation mode. To map our
study area (Morocco), we applied the following classification
methods: RF, CART, Gradient Tree Boost, SVM, MD, and
DT. The land cover maps produced by each approach are
presented in Figures 4 and 6 and were evaluated using the
overall accuracy, the producer accuracy, the User accuracy
of each class, and the Kappa coefficient derived from the
confusion matrix.
FIGURE 3. Legend of classification results of Morocco land cover map.
B. PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT OF EACH CLASSIFIED
MAP
To evaluate the classified soil maps generated by the
supervised machine learning algorithms available in GEE,
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we performed a confusion (error) matrix analysis of each
method. This matrix makes it easier to visualize the per-
formance of the accuracy evaluation and using this matrix,
we will present in Tables 3-8 the overall accuracy, User accu-
racy, producer accuracy, and Kappa coefficient. The diagonal
elements of the matrix represent the areas that were correctly
classified. To simplify the results for these areas, we have pre-
sented in Figure 8 all the points that were correctly classified
for each class by each classifier.
The overall accuracy (OA) essentially tells us, among all
the reference sites, what proportion was mapped correctly and
is usually expressed as a percentage. It is calculated by adding
the number of correctly classified sites and devoting it to the
total number of reference sites (see Formula 1).
Number of correctly classified samples
OA = (1)
Number of samples
User accuracy (UA) essentially indicates how often the
class on the map will be present in the field, i.e., reliability.
It is calculated by taking the total number of correct classifi-
cations for a particular class and dividing it by the row total
(see Formula 2).
Correct imprevious surface pixel
UA = (2)
Correct + Misclassified pixel
Producer Accuracy (PA) is the frequency with which the
actual terrain features are correctly displayed on the classified
map or the probability that a certain land cover of a ground
area is classified as such. It is also the number of accurately
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FIGURE 4. Classification results of Morocco land cover map. A) Classification by MD; B) Classification by RF; C) Classification by DT;
D) Classification by GTB; E) Classification by SVM; F) Classification by Cart.

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classified reference sites divided by the total number of ref- TABLE 9. The overall accuracy and Kappa coefficient of Land cover
classification of different methods after and before the adding spectral
erence sites for that class (see Formula 3). indices.
Correct imprevious surface pixel
PA = (3)
Total imprevious pixels
Finally, for the kappa coefficient shows an overall evalua-
tion of the performance of the classification compared to the
random assignment of values. It is generated from a statistical
test to evaluate the accuracy of classification, i.e., whether
the classification did better than random. This coefficient can
range from -1 to 1.

C. COMPARISON OF THE ACCURACY ASSESSMENT OF

EACH METHOD AFTER THE ADDITION OF SPECTRAL
INDICES
Spectral indices are combinations of the pixel values of two
or more spectral bands in a multispectral image. They show
the relative abundance or absence of a land cover type of
interest in an image. Among the best-known indices is the
Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) [52], this
index indicates the abundance of vegetation by comparing
the different reflectance values of the red and near-infrared
bands.
There are many other indices such as the Bare Soil
Index (BSI), Modified Normalized Difference Water Index
(MNDWI), etc. . . that use a variety of spectral bands to high-
light different phenomena, such as vegetation, water, soil,
etc. . . In this study, we used the following four spectral indices
[52]: NDVI for vegetation, BSI for soil, MNDWI for water,
and Normalized Difference Built-up Index (NDBI) for Built-
up area. Table 1 shows the formulas for the calculation of each
of these indices.
In this work, these four indices were added in the feature
extraction phase and when creating the training data. In this
step, we calculated these indices and added them as spectral
bands to improve our classification results for each classifier
used in this project.
After adding these spectral NDVI, BSI, MNDWI, and FIGURE 5. The overall accuracy (OA) before and after adding spectral
indices of different methods.
NDBI indices to the Landsat 8 OLI image bands of the
study area, the classification was rerun to compare the results
found from each classifier to evaluate the performance of the
classifiers used in this work. Table 9 shows the results of the According to our study on previous works [20], [30], [31],
Kappa coefficient and the overall accuracy of each algorithm [32], [33], [34], [53], [54], [55], [56] and from this work,
before and after the addition of these indices to see the impact we found that the methodology we used in this experimen-
of these indices on our processing, and Figure 5 shows only a tation could be adapted to map and evaluate other areas in
bar graph of the Overall Accuracy (OA) before and after the different countries or cities. The most important contribution
addition of the spectral indices of the different methods. to this research was the use of the following classifiers:
CART, RF, SVM, Gradient Tree Boost, DT, and MD to map
V. DISCUSSION the Moroccan territory into the following zones: Water, For-
The results obtained in this study used LANDSAT 8 OLI est, Built-up, Sand, Barren, and Cropped using the Landsat 8
datasets and processing tools such as the Google Earth Engine OLI dataset and the GEE platform.
platform and classifiers that are used to map the territory Our analysis showed that the Minimum Distance classifier
of Morocco to know the area of each zone or category is the best-performing classifier because its classification
(Water Zone, Forest, Built-up, Sand, Barren, and Cropped) accuracy is very high compared to the other classifiers used.
and to evaluate the performance of each classifier used in this The accuracy obtained by this classifier is 93.85% and for its
research. kappa coefficient, we obtained 0.93.

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FIGURE 6. Classification results of Morocco’s land cover map after adding spectral indices. A) Classification by GTB; B) Classification by Cart;
C) Classification by DT; D) Classification by RF; E) Classification by MD; F) Classification by SVM.

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FIGURE 7. The user’s accuracy (UA), and the producer’s accuracy (PA) values of each adopted classifier.

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 H. Ouchra et al.: Machine Learning Algorithms for Satellite Image Classification

FIGURE 8. Charts of points were correctly classified for each adopted classifier. a) SVM; b) RF; c) Cart; d) MD.

The classified maps of the territory of Morocco from in Figures 4 and 6 and you’ll find the legend showing the
the following period 1-1-2021 to 1-12-2021 are presented names of each classified class with its very visible color

71138 VOLUME 11, 2023

H. Ouchra et al.: Machine Learning Algorithms for Satellite Image Classification
FIGURE 8. (Continued.) Charts of points were correctly classified for each adopted classifier. e) GTB; f) DT.
in Figure 3. The figure shows the distribution of land use
categories for that year, a total of 6 classes were produced
for each of the images (Water, Built-up, Cropped, Sand,
Barren, and Forest areas). The image classification results
were compared in terms of the accuracy of each classifier as
shown in Tables 3-8. These tables show the confusion matrix,
OA, CA, PA, and Kappa coefficient for each method.
From the confusion matrix of each classifier used,
we deduced that the best classification is the Minimum Dis-
tance classifier because its Kappa coefficient is 0.92 which
is a value close to 1 which indicates that the classification
is significantly better than random and it has an accuracy
of 93.85%, this is a high accuracy compared to the other
accuracy 91.22%, 89.47%, 89.47%, 74.56% and 91.22% of
RF, DT, CART, SVM, and Gradient Tree Boost, respectively.
The overall results for the two classifiers DT and CART
are very similar and for the two classifiers following RF and
GTB. The SVM classifier is the classifier that has an accuracy
of 74.56%, it is a very low accuracy compared to the other
classifiers, and its Kappa coefficient is 0.69.
For User and producer accuracy for a given class is gener-
ally not the same. For example, in the confusion matrix of the
Minimum Distance classifier which has high accuracy com-
pared to other classifiers, we found the producer’s accuracy
for the Built-up class was 85.71% while the User’s accuracy
was 94.73% as shown in Figure 7 and Table 6, this means
VOLUME 11, 2023
that even though only 85.71% of the reference Built-up areas
were correctly identified as Built-up and 94.73% of the areas
identified as Built-up in the classification were Built-up.
If we take for example the Barren class, we found that the
Barren (2) areas were classified by error as Built-up, contrary
to the other areas Water, Forest, and Cropped which were
classified correctly i.e., there is no error of classification.
There is only the value 0 in these classes compared to the
Built-up class It is observed that all the algorithms achieved
a satisfactory match in Water’s classification because all the
validation points were correctly classified as shown in the
graphs presented in Figure 7 and in the confusion matrices.
Generally, we can have very high accuracy for some
classes, while others can have poor accuracy.
To improve these results obtained, we decided to add the
spectral indices in the training data and in the LANDSAT 8
OLI satellite image bands that we used. This methodology
allows us to improve the performance of the classifiers to
obtain a better classification of our study area.
The spectral indices that were added are the following:
NDVI, MNDWI, BSI, and NDBI. These remote sensing
indices allow us to separate the soil from the other land
cover characteristics of the Moroccan territory. For example,
the NDVI and MNDWI indices can be widely applied in
several regions regardless of climatic conditions and geo-
graphical features. The BSI and NDBI are indices that allow
71139

defining just the built-up areas and bare soil, they are rela-
tively sensitive indicators. The performance of the bare soil
index (BSI) differs in wet and dry-arid regions and depends
on soil composition, soil moisture and even surrounding
green cover. Generally, these indices are derived from dif-
ferent spectral wavelengths and each index has a calculation
equation as shown in Table 1.
In this research, our analysis showed that after the addition
of these indices all the accuracies and Kappa coefficient of
each classifier used are increased and the best-performing
classifier before and after the addition of the indices remains
the same classifier, that is the Minimum Distance classifier.
All the results of accuracy and Kappa coefficient of each
classifier are improved after adding these indices. We have
the Minimum Distance classifier which has an accuracy of
93.85% before the addition of the indices, on the contrary
after the addition of the indices we got 95.76%, which means
an improvement almost of 2%, and for the other classifiers
of shown in Table 3-8. Figure 6 shows the classified maps
of each classifier after adding the indices and you’ll find the
legend showing the names of each classified class with its
very visible color in Figure 3.
VI. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
The main objective of this work was to evaluate and com-
pare the performance of different classification algorithms,
in terms of classification accuracy, producer accuracy, User
accuracy, and Kappa coefficient, as well as to test the ability
of the GEE platform and Landsat 8 OLI data to classify
(Water, Built-up, Cropped, Sand, Barren, and Forest areas)
(LC classes) on the Moroccan territory.
The novelty of this work was to implement other algo-
rithms such as MD, GTB, etc. in addition to the algorithms
that are frequently used in the literature such as RF, SVM,
and CART, and compare all the algorithms between them
according to the accuracy and the Kappa coefficient and also
the major idea of this work was to exploit the GEE platform
to collect a solid collection of Landsat 8 OLI satellite data,
to filter them to obtain only the satellite images of the year
2021 and to study the impact of using different combinations
of variables and spectral indices that can improve the classifi-
cation performance. From the results presented in this work,
we can conclude that the reliability and versatility of the GEE
platform thanks to its cloud architecture allow us to avoid the
integration of other external and often commercial software.
According to the results of the experimentation, high
accuracy was obtained by the supervised algorithm of the
minimum distance through the methodology of machine
learning, which is based on the collection of training points
and validation of the study area to be used during the appli-
cation of this methodology to obtain a better classification
of the study area. Among the advantages of this algorithm
is relatively simple to understand and implement. It does
not require extensive knowledge of machine learning or
image processing. It uses the spectral signatures of the dif-
ferent land cover classes to perform the classification. These
71140
H. Ouchra et al.: Machine Learning Algorithms for Satellite Image Classification
spectral signatures can be derived from satellite images or
other remote sensing data sources. This allows us to exploit
the unique spectral characteristics of the different classes
present in Morocco. It is generally fast to run, making it
efficient for handling large amounts of data. This can be ben-
eficial when mapping land cover over large areas of Morocco.
Another advantage of this algorithm is that it can be adapted
to consider the specificities of Morocco, such as the pre-
dominant land cover types in the region, seasonal variations,
etc. It is possible to define specific distance thresholds or to
adjust the parameters of the algorithm to obtain more accurate
results adapted to local characteristics. The results of the
Minimum Distance algorithm are generally easy to interpret.
Land cover classes are assigned based on the spectral distance
between the pixels and the reference spectral signatures. This
creates clear and understandable land cover maps.
The challenges we found in this work are having a very
good internet connection and the limited availability of all
satellite data with adequate resolutions in GEE and finding
a very fast method for collecting the training and validation
points apart from manually collecting these points.
This work differs from those that exist in the literature
because all the previous works were done to propose solu-
tions to the phenomena observed in different study areas in
Morocco or for cities in Morocco or other countries, unlike
our work which was done to evaluate the performance of
classifiers used to classify and map the territory of Morocco
using the Landsat satellite and the GEE platform that is
why this document contributes to researchers, geologists,
urban planners, and data scientists, etc. It depends on the
phenomenon and the problem observed on a territory, graph-
ically and geometrically, from the analysis of qualitative and
quantitative data.
For future work, we will study unsupervised algorithms
and deep learning models that are more effective for the clas-
sification of satellite images to obtain a better classification
and detection of urban areas in the study area of Casablanca
of the Moroccan territory.
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