Soil classification: An application of self organising map and k-means

This paper discusses the application of two unsupervised methods in classifying type of soils. Soils that are suitable for agricultural activities can be classified into four classes which are hill soil, organic soil, alteration soil and alluvium soil. In addition, no specific support system is able to classify the type of soil and retrieve the information for location and suitable plants for local purposes. In this study, we applied self organizing map (SOM) and k-means in constructing the classification model. The inputs for this study are color, texture, drainage class and terrain. Throughout the process of training and testing, the classification rate for this SOM and k-means are 91.8% and 79.8% respectively.