John Wiley, 2016. — 472. Second editionRemote sensing is a mechanism for collecting raster data or images, and remotely sensed images represent an objective record of the spectrum relating to the physical properties and chemical composition of the earth surface materials. Information extraction from those images is, on the other hand, an entirely subjective process. People with differing application foci will derive very different thematic information from the same source image. Image processing thus becomes a vital tool for the extraction of thematic and/or quantitative information from raw image data. For more in‐depth analysis, the images need to be analysed in conjunction with other complementary data, such as existing thematic maps of topography, geomorphology, geology and landuse, or with geochemical and geophysical survey data, or ‘ground truth’ data, logistical and infrastructure information; and so here comes GIS, a highly sophisticated tool for the management, display and analysis of all kinds of spatially referenced information.
Remote sensing, image processing and GIS are all extremely broad subjects in their own right; far too broad to be covered in one book. As illustrated in Fig. 0.1, our book is aimed at the overlap between the three disciplines, providing an overview of essential techniques and a selection of case studies in a variety of application areas, emphasising the close relationship between them. The application cases are biased toward the earth sciences but the image processing and GIS techniques are generic and independent of any software, and therefore transferable skills suited to all applications.
The book has been written with university students and lecturers in mind as a principal textbook. For students’ needs in particular, we have tried to convey knowledge in simple words, with clear explanations and with conceptual illustrations. For image processing and GIS, mathematics is unavoidable, but we understand that this may be off‐putting for some. To minimize such effects, we try to emphasize the concepts, explaining in common sense terms rather than in too much mathematical detail. The result is intended to be a comprehensive yet ‘easy learning’ solution to a fairly challenging topic.
There are sections providing extended coverage of some necessary mathematics and advanced materials for use by course tutors and lecturers; these sections will be marked as such. Hence the book is written for both students and teachers. With many author‐developed techniques and recent research case studies, it is also an excellent reference book for higher level readers including researchers and professionals in remote sensing application sectors.
In this book, we have presented a unique combination of tools, techniques and applications that we hope will be of use to the full breadth of geoscientific and remote sensing communities. The book begins with the fundamentals of the core image processing tools used in remote sensing and GIS with adequate mathematical details in Part I, then it becomes slightly more applied and less mathematical in Part II to cover the wide scope of GIS where many of those core image processing tools are used in different contexts. Part III contains the entirely applied part of the book, where we describe a selection of cases where image processing and GIS have been used, by the authors, in teaching, research and industrial projects in which there is a dominant remote sensing component.Image processing
Digital image and display
Point operations (contrast enhancement)
Algebraic operations (multi‐image point operations)
Filtering and neighbourhood processing
RGB‐IHS transformation
Image fusion techniques
Principal component analysis
Image classification
Image geometric operations
Introduction to interferometric synthetic aperture radar technique
Sub‐pixel technology and its applications
Geographical information systems
Geographical information systems
Data models and structures
Defining a coordinate
Operations
Extracting information from point data: Geostatistics
Representing and exploiting surfaces
Decision support and uncertainty
Complex problems and multi‐criterion evaluation
Remote sensing applications
Image processing and GIS operation strategy
Thematic teaching case studies in SE Spain
Research case studies
Industrial case studies
Summary
Concluding remarks
A: Imaging sensor systems and remote sensing satellites
B: Online resources for information, software and data
