Pareto boundary: a useful tool in the accuracy assessment of low spatial resolution thematic products

Low resolution remotely sensed data, providing consistent coverage of large areas with high temporal frequency, are increasingly used for the production of continental and global thematic maps. Nonetheless, current accuracy assessment methods relate mainly to local scale mapping investigations. In order to obtain a quantitative evaluation of the limitations due to the low spatial resolution of the data, we suggest to use the Pareto boundary. The Pareto boundary allows to determine the maximum user and producer´s accuracy values that could he attained at the same time and to represent such a lower limit as a boundary in a bidimensional space. We apply the Pareto boundary to a dataset of Landsat 7 images, analysing how the spatial resolution of available medium and low resolution sensors limits the accuracy of the results.