This paper presents the comparisons of three soft classification methods and three sub-pixel mapping methods for the classification of coastal areas at sub-pixel level. Specifically, SPOT-7 multispectral images covering the coastal area of Perth are selected as the experiment dataset. For the soft classification, linear spectral unmixing model, supervised fully-fuzzy classification method and the support vector machine are applied to generate the fraction map. Then for the sub-pixel mapping, the sub-pixel/pixel attraction model, pixel swapping and wavelets method are compared. Besides, the influence of the correct fraction constraint is explored. Moreover, a post-processing step is implemented according to the known spatial knowledge of coastal areas. The accuracy assessment of the fraction values indicates that support vector machine generates the most accurate fraction result. For sub-pixel mapping, wavelets method outperforms the other two methods with overall classification accuracy of 91.79% and Kappa coefficient of 0.875 after the post-processing step and it also performs best for waterline extraction with mean distance of 0.71m to the reference waterline. In this experiment, the use of correct fraction constraint decreases the classification accuracy of sub-pixel mapping methods and waterline extraction. Finally, the post-processing step improves the accuracy of sub-pixel mapping methods, especially for those with correct coefficient constraint. The most significant improvement of overall accuracy is as much as 4% for the sub-pixel/pixel attraction model with correct coefficient constraint.
Landform classification using a sub-pixel spatial attraction model to increase spatial resolution of digital elevation model (DEM)