Urban monitoring and change detection of central Tokyo using TerraSAR-X images

Monitoring urban growth and change is an important issue for urban planning and disaster management. In this study, two different approaches are conducted to monitor the urban areas. One is that a TerraSAR-X image is compared with an ALOS/PALSAR image to investigate the characteristics of urban land cover in different radar wavelengths. Also, a very high resolution optical QuickBird image is used as the ground truth. The other is that two temporal TerraSAR-X images are used to detect urban changes. Difference and correlation coefficient between two images are calculated with a sliding window. A new factor that composites difference and correlation coefficient is proposed to detect the changed areas. An aerial photograph is introduced to verify the accuracy of detection results.