Integrating support vector machines in a hierarchical output space decomposition framework

This paper presents a new approach called Hierarchical Support Vector Machines (HSVM), to address multiclass problems. The method solves a series of maxcut problems to hierarchically and recursively partition the set of classes into two-subsets, till pure leaf nodes that have only one class label, are obtained. The SVM is applied at each internal node to construct the discriminant function for a binary metaclass classifier. Because maxcut unsupervised decomposition uses distance measures to investigate the natural class groupings. HSVM has a fast and intuitive SVM training process that requires little tuning and yields both high accuracy levels and good generalization. The HSVM method was applied to Hyperion hyperspectral data collected over the Okavango Delta of Botswana. Classification accuracies and generalization capability are compared to those achieved by the Best Basis Binary Hierarchical Classifier, a Random Forest CART binary decision tree classifier and Binary Hierarchical Support Vector Machines.