Urban texture analysis

The purpose of this work is the study of urban areas based on texture analysis methodology that may improve the urban investigation through remote sensing, dedicated to seismic vulnerability in correlation with the geometrical properties of building blocks and the vulnerability data, taken from field surveys. Most of the algorithms for urban classification in the image processing domain are based only on the use of spectral information, not taking into account the geometric characteristics given by the spatial distribution to roads, buildings and green areas on the image. The study of these local proprieties, as the texture, may enrich the available information on the image, providing a further information layer which may improve the differentiability among suburban areas originally belonging to homogeneous areas. In order to overcome those limitations, a new methodology, based on the analysis of connected regions, was studied. At first the image is thresholded in order to detect built pixels. Then these pixels are connected into sub-regions and these subregions are investigated to extract features.