Manzul Kumar Hazarika
EXTRACTION OF ROAD INFORMATION USING MULTISENSOR DATA
Manzul Kumar HAZARIKA*, Kiyoshi HONDA*, Lal SAMARAKOON*, and Shunji MURAI**
* ACRoRS, STAR Program, Asian Institute of Technology, Klong Luang, Pathumthani, Thailand
manzul@ait.ac.th
**Institute of industrial Science, University of Tokyo, Komaba 4-6-1, Tokyo, Japan
KEY WORDS: Remote Sensing, Information Extraction.
ABSTRACT
Road network of the Asia plays a vital role in economic development of the region by providing access to
underdeveloped areas. Keeping the importance of an efficient road network in view, Asian Highway project has been
initiated by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP) to promote and
co-ordinate the development of international road transport in the Asian region and stimulate economic growth.
Capabilities of remote sensing data in road identification and their width estimation have been examined by setting up
several test-sites with roads of 5m, 15m, 35m and 64m width. SPIN-2 (2m) data, ADEOS Panchromatic (8m), SPOT
Panchromatic (10m), ADEOS Multispectral (16m) and LANDSAT TM (30m) have been used in this study.
All the sensors can identify 35m and 64m wide road. ADEOS Multispectral and LANDSAT TM data cannot identify a
road having a width of 15m or less. A 5m wide can be identified by SPIN-2 data only. Spatial resolution of data
contributes more to the clarity of a road than the multi-band observation capability. However, the surrounding
environment along the road also affects on its clarity
Two methods have been tested for road width estimation. One is to measure the road width on printed images and the
another is to count the number of pixels on a computer display. Result shows that in most of the cases, remote sensing
data has the capability to estimate the width with an accuracy of half of the spatial resolution or at least the accuracy
better than its resolution.
1 INTRODUCTION
Major portions of the route identified by the UN-ESCAP are the existing roads, which needs upgrading to Asian
Highway specifications. Accordingly, information of these routes are required for making a plan. Many of the Asian
countries are very poor and some of them are suffering from economic and political instability. In such a situation, only
a few countries possess updated information for existing roads. Further, updating road information through physical
survey is not only an expensive task but also time consuming. Remote sensing technology can be effectively used to
overcome such problems.
2 STUDY AREA AND DATA USED
The area in this study falls in the northern part of the Bangkok City. Study area is extended from 100 ?15? to 100745? in
the East and 14200? to 14230? in the North. In this study, satellite data of various spatial resolutions with different
sensors have been used. Data used in this study are shown in Table 1.
Satellite/Sensor Spatial Resolution Path/Row Acquisition Date
SPIN 2/KVR-1000 (Analog) 2m - 1995
ADEOS/AVNIR (Panchromatic) 8m 113/333 28-05-97
ADEOS/AVNIR (Multispectral) 16m 113/333 25-01-97
SPOT/HRV (Panchromatic) 10m 262/322 28-06-96
LANDSAT/TM (Multispectral) 30m 129/50 21-05-95
Table 1 Satellite data used in the study
International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXIII, Part B3. Amsterdam 2000. 367
