Evaluating the generalization ability of convolutional neural networks for built-up area extraction in different cities of China

The difficulty of build-up area extraction is due to complexity of remote sensing data in terms of heterogeneous appearance with large intra-class variations and lower inter-class variations. In order to extract the built-up area from Landsat 8-OLI images provided by Google earth engine(GEE), we propose a convolutional neural networks(CNN) utilizing spatial and spectral information synchronously, which is built in Google drive using Colaboratory-Keras. To train a CNN model with good generalization ability, we choose Beijing, Lanzhou, Chongqing, Suzhou and Guangzhou of China as the training sites, which are very different in term of natural environments. The Arc GIS-Model Builder is employed to automatically select 99 332 samples from the 38-m global built-up production of the European Space Agency(ESA) in 2014. The validate accuracy of the five experimental sites is higher than 90%. We compare the results with other existing building data products. The classification results of CNN can be very good for the details of the built-up areas, and greatly reduce the classification error and leakage error. We applied the well-trained CNN model to extract built-up areas of Chengdu, Xi’an, Zhengzhou, Harbin, Hefei, Wuhan, Kunming and Fuzhou, for the sake of evaluating the generalization ability of the CNN. The fine classification results of the eight sites indicate that the generalization ability of the well-trained CNN is pretty good. However, the extraction results of Xi’an, Zhengzhou and Hefei are poor. As for the training data, only Lanzhou is located in the northwest region, so the trained CNN has poor image classification ability in the northwest region of China.