INNOVATIVE SATELLITE IMAGE MAP OF R.ALKHABRTA AREA, SAUDI ARABIA 
USING HIGH RESOLUTION IMAGE 
Sultan AlSultan#*, H. S. Lim @ , M. Z. MatFafri® K. Abdullah @ and N. Mohd. Saleh @ 
#Senior advisor to Ministry of Higher Education, Ministry of Higher Education Riyadh 11153, Saudi Arabia, 
Ass. Prof, of Remote Sensing at Qassim University Tel:+96663800050 - Mobile: + 966 50 489 0977 
ISPRS, Commission 7.7& 6.3, Middle East Coordinator http://www.commission7.isprs.org/wg7/, 
http://www.itc.nl/isprsc6/wg3/ Email: computer_305@yahoo.com 
@ School of Physics, 
Universiti Sains Malaysia, 
11800 Penang, Malaysia. 
Tel: +604-6577888, Fax: +604-6579150 
E-mail: hslim@usm.my, mjafri@usm.my, khirudd@usm.my, nasirun@usm.my 
KEYWORDS: Remote Sensing, Environment, Mapping, Land Application 
ABSTRACT: 
Satellite remote sensing can provide a variety of useful data for various type of research. Satellite image map is one of the products 
that aim to promote remote sensing. In this study, a high resolution satellite image was used to create a high resolution satellite 
image map over AlKhabra, Saudi Arabia. The objective of this project is to produce a satellite image map by using remote sensing 
technique to map the distribution of land use, land desrert characteristics, and related transportation variables through space and over 
time. A good quality satellite data have been selected to produce a satellite image map. Processing procedure includes geometric 
correction, contrast stretching, filtering and area cutting. The final product of satellite image map will be maps at scales of 
1:91,831.00. This study indicated that the useful of high resolution satellite image to produce a high resolution satellite map. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
A major advantage of remotely sensed satellite images is the 
regional/synoptic view of the data. The regional perspective 
view is enhanced further by digitally mosaicking different 
images collected by the same satellite to cover an even larger 
regional area. Another advantage is the multitemporal aspect of 
satellite images, which can be used to monitor changes on the 
Earth's surface or update an existing data set. 
In this project, we are produced a satellite image map by using 
high resolution remote sensing data over AlKhabra, Saudi 
Arabia. The increasing availability of remote-sensing images, 
acquired periodically by satellite sensors on the same 
geographical area, makes it extremely interesting to develop the 
monitoring systems capable of automatically producing and 
regularly updating land-cover maps of the considered site 
(Bruzzone, et al., 2002). Presently, satellite image map offers 
valuable information for many applications, such as agricultural 
applications, tourism management and planning, traffic network 
planning, industry management etc. 
The main objective of this study is to evaluate the accuracy of 
each classification technique to classify the high spatial 
resolution digital satellite images. Three supervised 
classification methods were used in this study Maximum 
Likelihood, Minimum Distance-to-Mean, Parallelepiped and 
Parallelepiped with Maximum Likelihood Classifier 
Tiebreaker). Supervised classification of multispectral remote 
sensing imagery is commonly used for land cover determination 
(Duda and Canty. 2002). Parallelepiped with Maximum 
Likelihood Classifier Tiebreaker classifier was found to 
produce the best accuracy in this study. 
2. STUDY AREA 
The study area in the Arabian Peninsula, located between 12 °N 
and 32 °N latitude and between 20 °E and 35 °E longitude. This 
particular geographical position gives the area great bioclimatic 
diversity. Saudi Arabia physical geography can be divided into 
five geographic regions: (i) the Western Highlands, (ii) the 
Central Plateau, (iii) the Northern Deserts, (vi) the Rub al Khali 
desert, and (v) the Eastern Lowlands. The selected study area is 
centered on City of Alkhabra, Saudi Arabia. Figure 1 shows the 
study area of the City of Alkhabra and its surrounding desert 
terrain. 
Corresponding author. Dr. Sultan AlSultan, Senior advisor to Ministry of Higher Education, Ministry of Higher Education Riyadh 11153, 
Saudi Arabia, Assoc. Prof, of remote Sensing at Qassim University, Tel:+96663800050 - Mobile: + 966 50 489 0977, ISPRS, Commission 7.7& 6.3, 
Middle East Coordinator, http://www.commission7.isprs.org/wg7/, http://www.itc.nl/isprsc6/wg3/, Email: computer_305@yahoo.com.